Most of the world is under the mistaken notion that humankind has just entered a new year. The truth is that, according to most calendars, the new year does not start today, but some weeks or months into the future. The Gregorian calendar, which denotes today as the first day of the new year, is only a refinement of the Julian calendar, in which Julius Caesar aligned the Roman year with the tropical year. “Tropical” comes from the Greek word tropos, which means to turn. And the tropics are defined by the northernmost (Cancer) and southernmost (Capricorn) points on Earth where the Sun appears directly overhead, before it turns to move the other way. The Sun swings back north in mid-January, at the time known in some parts of India as Uttarayan. And so this event marks the new year in many traditional calendars — like the Tamil Pongal festival, a day also celebrated in parts of North India with the Lohri festival. If India were to follow the tropical year, the new year should logically start in mid-January (no, don’t start drinking again).
The more commonly celebrated new year in India is also a solar event — the vernal equinox (or equal night) in the second half of March, when the Sun is over the equator and day and night are of equal length. The Parsi Navroz, Kerala’s Vishu, Maharashtra’s Gudi Padva and even the Baha’i new year are all related to the equinox. Even England used to celebrate March 25 (as near as the English could get to the equinox) as the start of the new year, until the country adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1751.
But the real season for happiness in any rural society is, of course, harvest time — and explains why the most common celebration of a new year is on Baisakhi, in mid-April. Punjab, Bengal, Andhra Pradesh (which celebrates Ugadi) all celebrate the date with much festivity. Of course, harvest times vary across the country — which is why Onam in Kerala is celebrated in August-September, and Pongal in Tamil Nadu in January.
While one can argue about which is the more legitimate calendar to follow, it is only Tamil Nadu where the matter has become the subject of a legal and political dispute. The state assembly decreed in 2008 that from 2009, Pongal would be celebrated as the new year, and not Poothandu in April — a move that immediately attracted criticism from the Opposition; the matter is now in court. Despite this attempt to impose uniformity, the fact is that India has many new years. Diwali is celebrated by businessmen and by the stock market as the start of a new year, with many people ceremoniously opening new books of accounts on the day.
If dates clash, so does the counting of years. The Gregorian year 2010 is 1185 in the Malayalam calendar, 2066 in the Samvat calendar, and 5770 in the Hebrew calendar, denoted by AM (for anno mundi, for Year of the World). The Chinese started counting later than the Jews, so they are in the year 4706 (their new year begins in late January-early February, with the spring festival). Creationists, those who take the Bible literally, tend to agree with the Jews because they think that the Earth is about 6,000 years old — and a plague on pagan astronomers who date the third rock from the Sun all the way back to 4.5 billion years. If you’re on the side of the astronomers, though, none of this matters very much. What difference do a few weeks or months make in terms of when you start counting, since you are into Week No. 234,797,140,000 in the Earth’s history? And so, since one day is as good as any other, here’s wishing all readers of Business Standard a Happy and Prosperous New Year.