Cincidence of Onam and Eid Milad Un Nabi Coming Together

A Rare Coincidence of Onam and Eid Milad Un Nabi Coming Together: Time to Reaffirming Unity in an Era of Division.   

Today, 26 August 2026, marks an interesting alignment and coming together of the two important festivities – Onam and Eid Un Nabi, which are dependent on the solar and lunar calendars, respectively. 

Onam marks the grand harvest festival celebrated by Malyalis across the state of Kerala and around the world, wherever they have migrated, and the Eid marks the solemn birth anniversary of Prophet Muhammad (Milad-un-Nabi),

Wishing you all a very happy Onam and Eid Milad Un Nabi

The coinciding of these two festivals -  coming together on the very same date - is nowhere more important than in the state of Kerala where these two festivities and their celebrations resonate deeply with all the Malayalis in Kerala—a state historically celebrated as a beacon of pluralism, where the call to prayer, temple bells, and church chimes harmoniously weave into the fabric of their daily life.

Onam itself has long transcended religious boundaries in the state, serving as a secular, cultural festival of abundance and social equality where every Keralite, regardless of faith, comes together as one family.

This rare convergence serves as a reminder of the often quoted “India’s Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb” and Kerala’s quintessential unity amidst diversity, proving that shared cultural heritage can comfortably coexist with individual religious beliefs and devotion that everyone must respect and appreciate.

Yet, recent reports of restrictive dictums issued in certain educational environments serve as a wake-up call. Exclusivism poses a challenge to the pluralistic values of India that built our community resilience. Progress demands that we honour our distinct faith traditions while cherishing the and respecting the common cultural heritage that binds us together.

Here I am sharing my thoughts on the genesis of these two sacred observances and why Kerala’s legacy of pluralism must be preserved and celebrated.

Eid Milad-un-Nabi: Remembering the Birth of Prophet Muhammad

 Today, 26 August 2026, corresponding to the 12th day of Rabi-ul-Awwal, 1448 AH, in the Islamic lunar calendar, is observed across India as Eid Milad-un-Nabi — the anniversary of the birth of Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam. On this occasion, I extend my warm greetings to all my Muslim friends

 What the Day Marks

Tradition holds that Prophet Muhammad was born in Mecca around 570 CE — a year remembered in Islamic history as the "Year of the Elephant" — to his parents Abdullah and Bibi Amina. His exact date of birth is not settled with certainty even among Islamic scholars, but the 12th of Rabi-ul-Awwal, the third month of the Hijri calendar, has come to be widely observed as his birth anniversary. Because the Islamic calendar is lunar and runs about ten to eleven days shorter than the Gregorian year, this date drifts steadily backward each year — which is why the observance fell in late September a few years ago and has now moved to late August, and will keep moving earlier still.

The day is known by several names — Mawlid al-Nabi, Mawlid-un-Nabi Sharif, Eid Milad, and simply Milad-un-Nabi. The Arabic word *mawlid* itself means "birth." Interestingly, 12 Rabi-ul-Awwal is also traditionally regarded as the date of the Prophet's death in 632 CE, so for the majority Sunni tradition, this single day marks both events.

Not all Muslims mark the same date, however. A significant section of Shia Muslims — followers of the Twelver tradition — observe the 17th of Rabi-ul-Awwal instead, a date that in their tradition also coincides with the birth of the sixth Shia Imam, Ja'far al-Sadiq.

The Prophet's Message

Muslims believe that in 610 CE, at the age of forty, Muhammad received his first revelation in a cave near Mecca — the beginning of a series of revelations that were later compiled into the Quran, Islam's holy book. Central to his teachings was a strict monotheism, and to this day Muslims across the world orient their five daily prayers toward the Kaaba in Mecca and regard the Hajj pilgrimage there as a duty to be performed at least once in a lifetime by those who are able.

Eid Milad-un-Nabi is observed by recalling the Prophet's life and character — his teachings on compassion, his forgiveness of even his adversaries, and his conduct as a moral exemplar. Observances typically include Quran recitation, *naat* (devotional poetry in his praise), Seerah (biography) lectures, processions, and charitable giving.

A Festival with a History of Its Own

What is less commonly known is that the Mawlid celebration itself has a documented and somewhat contested history — it was not observed in the Prophet's own lifetime or by his immediate companions, and its emergence as a public festival came centuries later.

The earliest recorded court observances trace to the Shia Fatimid dynasty in Egypt at the end of the 11th century, which marked four separate mawlids — for the Prophet, for Ali, for his daughter Fatimah, and for the reigning caliph — through formal court processions. The celebration most historians credit as the first Mawlid festival in the Sunni tradition, however, was organised in 1207 CE at Erbil (in present-day Iraq) by Muzaffar al-Din Gökböri, a governor and brother-in-law of the celebrated Ayyubid sultan Salahuddin (Saladin). From there, the practice gradually spread and gained popular acceptance across much of the Sunni Muslim world over the following centuries.

That contested origin is precisely why the celebration remains a live theological debate within Islam even today. Scholars in the Salafi and, in South Asia, the Deobandi tradition regard Mawlid as *bid'ah* — an unwarranted innovation with no basis in the Quran or in the practice of the Prophet and his companions, and argue that Islam formally recognises only two festivals, Eid-ul-Fitr and Eid-ul-Adha. Against this, the Barelvi school of thought — to which a majority of Indian Muslims historically belong — holds that commemorating the Prophet's birth is a legitimate expression of devotion and love (*ishq-e-Rasool*) rather than an act of worship in itself, and has continued the practice with much enthusiasm, including public processions and the illumination of mosques and homes. This Barelvi–Deobandi difference, which took shape in 19th-century colonial India and hardened over the decades that followed, remains one of the more enduring fault lines within Indian Sunni Islam, and Eid Milad-un-Nabi is one of the clearest occasions on which it plays out publicly every year.

In parts of the Middle East too, the day is not universally celebrated: in Saudi Arabia and some neighbouring countries, where a more austere, Salafi-influenced interpretation prevails, public Mawlid celebrations are actively discouraged.

 Celebrated, Yet Debated

 In India, Eid Milad-un-Nabi is a gazetted public holiday, and large public gatherings, processions and prayer meetings mark the day in most cities. Interestingly, this coexistence of festivity and theological reservation is not unique to India — across the Muslim world, from Egypt (where certain regional mawlid gatherings, such as the one associated with the Sufi saint Ahmed el-Bedawi in Tanta, are known to draw crowds in the millions) to Southeast Asia, the day is marked with equal parts devotion and disagreement over its very legitimacy.

That the debate persists after eight centuries is, in its own way, a reflection of the diversity within Islam itself — a faith practised by nearly two billion people across vastly different cultures, each interpreting devotion to the Prophet in its own idiom.

 A Rare Coincidence: Eid Milad-un-Nabi and Onam, Together

This year brings with it a happy coincidence. Thiruvonam, the culminating and most important day of Kerala's ten-day Onam festival, also falls today, 26 August 2026 — the two calendars, one lunar and Islamic, the other solar and Malayalam, rarely align this way, and when they do, it tends to be remembered.

Onam itself is rooted in Hindu mythology — the legend of the benevolent Asura king Mahabali, whose annual homecoming from the netherworld, granted to him by Vishnu in his Vamana avatar, is what Malayalis across the world commemorate with the pookalam (flower carpet), the elaborate Onasadya feast served on banana leaf, boat races, and the Pulikali tiger dance. Yet for generations, Onam in Kerala has been something more than a Hindu festival — it has functioned as the state's unifying cultural occasion, celebrated by Hindus, Christians and Muslims alike as an expression of shared Malayali identity rather than a strictly religious observance. It is not uncommon, even today, to see Muslim students in hijab join their classmates in Thiruvathira dances, or families of different faiths exchange Onam greetings and sadya invitations with the same warmth as they would for Eid or Christmas. The Syro-Malabar Church, for its part, has formally clarified that Christian participation in Onam is a matter of cultural belonging rather than religious ritual — a framing that has historically allowed Kerala's syncretic social fabric to hold together.

It is this spirit that has, this week, made news in an unhappy way. At a residential school in Feroke, Kozhikode, a last-minute order barring students from wearing traditional attire — sarees and mundu — for their Onam function led to a group of Plus Two students being denied entry until parents and students protested; the restriction, unprecedented in previous years, was eventually withdrawn. It is one visible instance of a wider and long-standing debate: a section of religious opinion within the Muslim community, invoking Islamic theology, has for years discouraged participation in Onam festivities on the ground that they are rooted in Hindu myth, and there have been fatwas to that effect in the past. Despite this, younger Kerala Muslims have continued to participate with visible enthusiasm, and it is this quiet, everyday coexistence — not the occasional controversy — that has defined Kerala's reputation for communal harmony.

What is worth pausing on is why this now attracts more attention than it once did. Malayalis have long taken a certain pride in narrating Kerala's communal amity as something exceptional within India — a state where language, not religion, has historically been the stronger marker of identity, and where festivals of one community have routinely drawn genuine, unselfconscious participation from others. That older pattern has not vanished, but it now visibly competes, in a way it perhaps did not a generation ago, with a harder-edged religious assertiveness on more than one side — a reluctance in some quarters to be seen crossing communal lines, matched by a political climate across India in which every such gesture, or its withdrawal, is quickly read for what it signals. Neither impulse is unique to Kerala or to any one community; it is simply that Kerala's older culture of mixing makes the erosion more noticeable when it happens.

That two such different occasions — one marking the birth of the Prophet of Islam, the other the mythical homecoming of a beloved Asura king — should fall on the same day this year feels, in the end, like a gentle reminder of what is genuinely at stake. Kerala's syncretism was never built on everyone believing the same thing; it was built on people finding it entirely natural to celebrate what mattered to their neighbours as well as to themselves. That instinct is worth protecting, deliberately, in an age when it can no longer simply be taken for granted.

On this day, once again, my warm wishes to all my Muslim friends on Eid Milad-un-Nabi, and to all my Malayali friends on Thiruvonam.

Sarnath Joins the World Heritage List as India’s 45th Inscribed Site.

Earlier today, 25 July 2026, at the 48th Session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee meeting in Busan, South Korea, the “Ancient Buddhist Site of Sarnath” was formally inscribed on the World Heritage List. This welcome news finally finds the holy site of Sarnath its rightful place on the World Stage — A Timeless Sacred Landscape Recognized at Last. This landmark decision by the World Heritage Committee elevates one of humanity's most profound spiritual, intellectual, and artistic cradles onto the global stage.

This announcement has brought cheers across the country. Sarnath marks India’s 45th site on the coveted list of World Heritage — coming just a year after the inscription of the Maratha Military Landscapes of India as the 44th last year. Sarnath now stands permanently etched in the annals of world heritage, alongside places of outstanding universal value that humanity has collectively resolved to protect for future generations.

Sarnath site, located near Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, comprises two component parts: the Chaukhandi Stupa and the Archaeological Remains of Sarnath (including the Dhamekh Stupa, Dharmarajika Stupa, Mulagandhakuti Vihara, Ashokan Pillar and associated structures). Known in Buddhist tradition as Rishipatana, Ishipatana or Mrigadava (the Deer Park), this is the sacred geography where, in the sixth century BCE, Gautama Buddha delivered his first sermon — the Dharmachakra Pravartana or Turning of the Wheel of the Law — to his five disciples  (Panchavaggiya) and founded the Buddhist Sangha. It is one of the four principal destinations of Buddhist pilgrimage, a place the Buddha himself indicated as worthy of veneration. The Buddhist Sangha set in motion a philosophical and cultural movement that traversed mountains, deserts, and oceans to spread Buddha’s preachings and Buddhism across Asia and beyond.

A Brief History of the World Heritage Convention

To place this achievement in perspective, it is useful to recall the origins of the system that has now recognised Sarnath and included it in the World Heritage site. 

The World Heritage Convention was adopted by UNESCO in 1972, establishing an international framework for identifying and preserving cultural and natural sites of outstanding universal value. It emerged from two converging movements: one focused on protecting cultural monuments (catalysed by the successful international campaign to save the Nubian temples of Abu Simbel and Philae from the rising waters of the Aswan High Dam), and the other concerned with the conservation of nature. The Convention formally entered into force in 1975. The first sites were inscribed in 1978 and included the Galápagos Islands (Ecuador), Yellowstone National Park (USA), and Aachen Cathedral (Germany), among others.

India made its debut in this World Heritage list in 1983 with four entries: Ajanta Caves, Ellora Caves, the Taj Mahal, and Agra Fort. Since then the country has steadily added sites, reflecting its extraordinary cultural, historical and natural diversity. Yet, as Sudha Murty observed in her maiden speech in the Rajya Sabha in July 2024, the pace at which Indian sites are being recognised in this elite site, has often felt inadequate relative to India’s five-thousand-plus years of recorded civilisation and the sheer wealth of archaeological and architectural treasures still awaiting global recognition.

For decades, heritage nominations from India sometimes suffered from incomplete dossiers, insufficient comparative analysis, or lack of sustained institutional focus. The elaborate documentation, research, management plans and proof of integrity and authenticity that UNESCO demands for this recognition were not always prepared with the required seriousness. Fortunately, that tide has begun to turn, particularly in the past decade. Heritage is increasingly positioned as a soft-power asset and a tool of cultural diplomacy. The successful serial nomination of the Maratha Military Landscapes last year (timed with the 350th anniversary of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj’s coronation) and now Sarnath demonstrate what becomes possible when intent, rigorous scholarship and coordinated effort converge.

Sarnath: Layers of History and Enduring Spiritual Significance

Sarnath has been one of the most extensively excavated sites by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). The stratified remains span roughly sixteen centuries — from the pre-Mauryan period (5th–4th centuries BCE) through the Mauryan, Shunga, Kushan, Gupta, post-Gupta and early medieval periods until destruction in the 12th century CE (with some later additions). Emperor Ashoka marked the place with a polished sandstone pillar whose Lion Capital later became the National Emblem of India. The massive Dhamekh Stupa, the remains of the Dharmarajika Stupa, monastic complexes and countless votive stupas testify to continuous royal, monastic and lay patronage.

The site was included in India’s Tentative List as early as 1998. The formal nomination dossier for the 2025–26 cycle was submitted by ASI in January 2025. After an approximately eighteen-month process involving technical meetings with advisory bodies and an ICOMOS evaluation mission in September 2025, the World Heritage Committee inscribed the property under criteria (iii) and (vi). Criterion (iii) recognises its exceptional testimony to a cultural and spiritual tradition — one of the four principal Buddhist pilgrimage sites, demonstrated by the dense concentration of religious buildings constructed and reconstructed over many centuries. Criterion (vi) acknowledges its direct and tangible association with events of outstanding universal significance in the life of the Buddha: his first sermon and the establishment of the Sangha.

With this inscription, three of the four great Buddhist pilgrimage sites — Lumbini (Nepal), the Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya, and now Sarnath — stand on the World Heritage List, alongside other major Buddhist heritage places such as Sanchi, Nalanda and Ajanta.

World Heritage status is more than a badge of prestige. It reinforces India’s identity as the birthplace of Buddhism and strengthens cultural diplomacy with nations across Asia — Japan, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, South Korea, Mongolia and beyond — for whom Sarnath remains a living place of reflection and inspiration for hundreds of millions.

Yet recognition also brings responsibility. The inscription commits India to sustain the Outstanding Universal Value of the site through careful management of tourism, protection of the buffer zone against unplanned development, and continued scientific conservation. ASI’s century-and-a-half of excavation and preservation work — from the pioneering efforts of the 19th and early 20th centuries that recovered the Lion Capital and hundreds of sculptures, to ongoing scientific interventions on the brick structures — provides a strong foundation. The Sarnath Site Museum, established in 1904 and one of India’s earliest site museums, continues to house masterpieces that illuminate the artistic and spiritual genius of successive centuries.

Just as the Maratha forts nomination required deep historical research, careful selection of representative components and a cohesive narrative, the Sarnath dossier reflects the same seriousness of purpose. Serial nominations — bundling related sites under a unifying theme — have emerged as an effective strategy. They allow the inscription of cultural landscapes rather than isolated monuments. This approach holds promise for other clusters still waiting: the Deccan strongholds, the rock-cut and temple complexes of the south, the lesser-known but profound archaeological landscapes scattered across the subcontinent.

India is a civilisationally rich country. New archaeological discoveries continue to emerge. Sites of the quality of Sarnath, or the architectural ensembles of Bijapur that inspired the design of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya in Mumbai, or countless others, deserve systematic documentation and nomination. The Ministry of Culture and ASI have shown what focused effort can achieve. The challenge now is to institutionalise that capacity — dedicated research teams, sustained funding, inter-departmental coordination, and a long-term national strategy for identifying and preparing sites of Outstanding Universal Value.

Beyond the UNESCO tag lies a deeper question: how does India view its heritage? Are these sites merely tourist attractions, or living cultural assets that inform identity, education, policy and future generations? Global recognition should trigger investment in conservation, heritage education and sustainable tourism that empowers local communities while safeguarding authenticity.

We have seen our past embossed on our currency notes, postmarked on our letters, and now, with Sarnath, further recognised by the world. The Deer Park where the Wheel of Dharma first turned has at last found its rightful place among humanity’s shared treasures. It is time we continue to inscribe the rest of our civilisational inheritance — carefully, consciously and collaboratively — into both the global record and our own collective future.

National Space Day 2026: ISRO's Trials, Its Talent, and the Test of Its Unique Culture.

  

 Today, 23 August, India observes National Space Day — a day PM Narendra Modi declared in 2023 to mark the moment Vikram, the lander of Chandrayaan-3, made its historic soft landing on the south polar region of the Moon, a feat no other nation had achieved. That moment when Vikram made its tryst with its landing on the moon’s south pole surface is one which will continue to be etched in every Indian who witnessed this moment. 

In the earlier attempt in 2019 the Chandrayaan 2 mission’s Vikram Landing was telecast live at the Nehru Science Centre, Mumbai and even at that late hour the auditorium was full — families, students, ordinary citizens who had come simply to watch, together, as the "15 minutes of terror" played out on the big screen. Unfortunately, Vikram lander came very close to soft landing but then did not achieve its goal.  That night, when Chandrayaan-2's Vikram came so agonisingly close before its final-descent failure, our auditorium was packed with people who had come to witness history in the making. I had written then that cricket, cinema and chillies were long the common threads binding Indians across every divide — and that ISRO, in its quiet, unglamorous, relentless way, had earned itself a place alongside them as something every Indian, regardless of politics, could claim as their own. 

After the failure of Vikram lander in 2019, the Chandrayaan 3 was a grand success when it made a soft landing on. 23 August 2023 and later enabling the Pragya rower to Rowe the moons surface creating history. 

This year's National Space Day carries a more complicated set of emotions for me, and I suspect for many who have followed ISRO's journey closely.

Two Setbacks the Nation Needs to Understand

ISRO's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle — the "workhorse" that has flown for over three decades and carried missions as consequential as Chandrayaan-1, the Mars Orbiter Mission and Aditya-L1 — has suffered two consecutive, and disturbingly similar, failures in less than a year. On 18 May 2025, PSLV-C61 lost the EOS-09 radar imaging satellite when an anomaly struck the rocket's third stage minutes after a flawless liftoff. ISRO set up a Failure Analysis Committee, adopted its recommendations, and returned to the launch pad on 12 January 2026 with PSLV-C62 — this time subjected to a record seven Mission Readiness Reviews. Yet the same third-stage anomaly recurred, and with it went the EOS-N1 earth observation satellite and fifteen co-passenger payloads, Indian and international.

What makes this particularly painful, beyond the loss of expensive hardware, is that both satellites, EOS-09 and EOS-N1, were meant to strengthen India's strategic surveillance capability at a time when our security establishment can least afford such gaps. For an organisation whose PSLV had, until recently, been a byword for dependability, two identical failures in the same critical stage is a rare and sobering occurrence that deserves honest scrutiny rather than either panic or denial.

The Quiet Exodus

Unfortunately, even as ISRO is making all our efforts in overcoming its setbacks, a development that has troubled many Indians and ardent ISRO fans, even more are the reports that over a hundred Group 'A' scientists and engineers — many of them experienced hands working on flagship programmes — have resigned or sought voluntary retirement from ISRO in recent months. Reports suggest that around eighty are said to have left the UR Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru alone, with more than twenty departing the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram. It appears that India's own burgeoning private space sector — now home to several hundred start-ups and drawing substantial fresh investment — is offering compensation and speed that a government salary structure struggles to match, which could be the reason for this unprecedented attrition. The Department of Space has taken cognisance of this and is reported to responded by centralising and tightening exit approvals, particularly for scientists attached to Gaganyaan and other critical missions, reversing an arrangement that had earlier let centre directors decide such matters locally. I hope that the famous ISRO culture which was painstakingly built by its founders - Vikram Sarabhai and Satish Dhawan - and those who followed them in leadership role, will help ISRO to bounce back to its successes.

The attrition has understandably created anxiety and that should not be dismissed as ordinary attrition. However, we must also look at this attrition with caution against reading it only as loss. If some of these scientists are moving into India's own private space industry rather than leaving the country altogether, they may still be building India's space capability — only outside ISRO's four walls rather than within them. What matters, as always, is whether the ecosystem as a whole keeps growing. Even so, the government would do well to ask why our most experienced hands are choosing to leave a mission-driven institution they once could not imagine leaving, and to address that honestly rather than simply making the door harder to walk through.

Holding On to the ISRO Culture

It is worth remembering what made ISRO different in the first place. Vikram Sarabhai did not build a bureaucracy; he built a culture — of scientific pursuits married to public purpose, of scientists who saw themselves as nation-builders in the mould of SITE, Aryabhata and the SLV programme, carried forward with equal conviction by Satish Dhawan. That culture is precisely what turned a modest, resource-starved space programme into one capable of soft-landing on the Moon's south pole on its very first attempt at that feat. Setbacks like PSLV-C61 and C62, and an exodus of experienced scientists, test that culture in ways that success never does. My hope, on this National Space Day, is that ISRO's leadership — and the political class that oversees it — recognises that retaining this culture requires more than tighter exit rules; it requires making ISRO a place scientists still choose, not merely one they are prevented from leaving.

What Lies Ahead

Even amid these challenges, ISRO's calendar for the months ahead is a reminder of why the country continues to invest its hopes in this institution. The first uncrewed Gaganyaan flight, G1, carrying the half-humanoid Vyommitra to validate life-support and re-entry systems, is targeted for the last quarter of this year, with India's first crewed spaceflight to follow in 2027. Beyond that lie Chandrayaan-4, a lunar sample-return mission, and the longer horizon of the Bharatiya Antariksh Station, envisaged to be operational by 2035. Each of these carries the same demand the Moon landing did: precision, patience, and scientists who are given the reason and the room to stay.

Revisiting ISRO's Story

For readers who wish to go further back into ISRO's history and the spirit that built it, I have over the years written several blog pieces that may be of interest:

1. Tribute to Dr Vikram Sarabhai — the visionary founder of ISRO

Centenary tribute to Prof. Satish Dhawan — who turned Sarabhai's vision into institutional reality

https://khened.blogspot.com/2020/08/tribute-to-dr-vikram-sarabhai-father-of.html

2. Tribute to Prof Satsih Dhawan

https://khened.blogspot.com/2020/09/centenary-tribute-to-prof-satish-dhawan.html

3. How Aryabhata got its name — the story behind India's first satellite, named by Smt Indira Gandhi.

https://khened.blogspot.com/2025/04/19-april-2025-commemorating-golden.html

4. ISRO NASA Partnership and NISAR

https://khened.blogspot.com/2025/07/the-nasa-isro-partnership-and-nisar.htm

In Closing

On this National Space Day, my greetings go out first and foremost to the scientists, engineers and technicians of ISRO — those who stay, and those who have moved on to build India's space capability elsewhere. May the Failure Analysis Committee's findings restore the PSLV to the reliability the nation has come to expect of it. May Vyommitra's flight this year go as smoothly as Vikram's did in 2023, and may our Gaganyatris follow safely in 2027. And above all, may ISRO — through setbacks as much as through triumphs — hold fast to the culture that Vikram Sarabhai and Satish Dhawan gave it: driven by purpose, undivided by politics, and belonging, always, to every Indian.

Jai Hind, Jai ISRO, Jai Vigyan.

August 12, 2026 Total Solar Eclipse.

Reminiscence of my tryst with the 1980 Total Solar Eclipse in Raichur (6 February 1980)

 

Later today, 12 August 2026, the world will witness its next Total Solar Eclipse (TSE) — a narrow band of darkness that will sweep across the northern hemisphere encompassing a remote stretch of Siberia, eastern Greenland, western coast of Iceland, and will cover northern Spain and Portugal, at sunset. Totality at its maximum will last around two minutes and eighteen seconds, over the North Atlantic, attracting scientists and eclipse enthusiasts from across the globe to the path of totality.

India, unfortunately, will not be part of this celestial spectacle since it lies outside, even the outer fringes of the partial eclipse, this time.

Speaking of the eclipses, over the years general public in India has moved from fear to curiosity and amazement when it comes to dealing with eclipses and their observation.

 Nature's improbable geometry and arithmetic

In the process of evolution, nature has bestowed planet Earth, with the spectacles of eclipses – Solar and Lunar eclipses. The Sun's diameter – our star, which sustains life in all its diversity that helps the blue planet, perhaps the only one of its kind in the unending expanse of this vast universe -  is approximately 400 times that of the Moon. By a providential coincidence, the Sun also is approximatey 400 times farther away from Earth than the Moon does. These two ratios, when seen from the vantage point on Earth, reveal that the Moon's disc appears almost precisely the same size as that of the Sun's disc, which we see regularly. It is this nature creation which help us witness the lunar and solar eclipses, spectacles of the cosmos.

Nowhere else in our solar system does this celestial coincidence happen with such precision. Earth alone, perhaps, has a moon whose apparent size approximately matches that of our sun.  And this matching is so miraculously same that during the TSE the Sun - which gets eclipsed - appears to apparently vanish behind the Moon for a few minutes during eclipse totality and reveal, in that brief window, that spectacular "diamond ring" of the Sun's last rays bending around the Moon's edge, and the spectral corona — the Sun's own outer atmosphere —normally not seen due to Suns glare.

It should also be remembered that this providential alignment of the Sun and Moon, is temporary rather than permanent. Each year the Moon is drifting a few centimetres farther from Earth. Over the next tens of millions of years from now, total solar eclipses as we know them today, may no longer be possible from Earth. We are therefore, living in the window of cosmic time when this natural beauty of the TSE can be witnessed and all those who live in the path of eclipse must not let go of the opportunity to witness this nature’s spectacle with mandated safety measures.

India’s journey from Eclipse as a Taboo to natures spectacle.

India has seen a transformative change in people’s behaviour in its understanding of this natural phenomenon. There was a time until the beginning of the 1990s, when most citizens remained mostly indoors while the eclipses (both solar and lunar) occurred. The roads were empty with Covid 19 like situation, owing to the superstitious belief that plagued Indian society. However, all that changed – gradually. The TSE of 1995 was a path breaking event, which was telecast live across India and the man who was rendering live commentary on this celestial event was Prof Yashpal, whose physical appearance of a quintessential scientist with a look alike hair style of the legendary Einstein, and the collective efforts of science communicators across India including science centres and planetariums, helped the people to not only see the live telecast of the TSE but also throng to the nearby science centres and planetariums and also on to the streets, armed with safety sun glasses, to witness live the TSE playing out in sky. This was a moment of celebration for science communicators and ever since the eclipses have appealed to the people and motivated them to witness them live and begin to wonder with awe natures creation. Supported by the media- the eclipses – lunar and solar – have no longer remained taboo but begun to be appreciated, notwithstanding section of people who continue to hog headlines for their astrological, so called predictions. The science centres, planetariums and other science and technology departments and patrons of science and most importantly the media, have ensured that superstitions surrounding eclipses are gradually being eclipsed.

My First Tryst with the 1980 TSE

My first memory of the TSE goes back to 1980. It was on Feb 16, 1980 that the path of totality passed over parts of India including, most importantly, Raichur, my native place.

I was then studying in Engineering at Gulbarga (now Kalaburgi) and the buzz of the TSE was heard across the campus more particularly because one of the villages Jawalagera (Jalagera) in Raichur district was chosen by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) Bangalore for conducting observations and experiments. I must also confess that most of us believed – herd mentality - in the so called ill effects of the eclipses, as the rest of the country and were not initiated into observing eclipses.  

I vividly remember, 16 Feb, Saturday, was declared a holiday in our college. With two consecutive holidays, most of us who were not locals, travelled home on Friday evening and I reached my home, Raichur. Those were the days, whenever we had a day or two off, we used to go back home.

The news of IIA preparing for a temporary camp at Jawalgera – a village near Raichur, for conducting some experiments and observations during the TSE, had spread to Raichur. Now in hindsight, more importantly after serving the National Council of Science Museums (NCSM) for 35 years, I can understand how important the occasion must have been for the scientists from not only IIA but many others who had assembled at Jalagera, a nondescript village to witness the TSE.

My research while writing this post has helped me understand that IIA had set up a camp at Jalagera, building a heavy steel structure, 23 metres tall tower, at the site. The tower included “an optical system consisting of a coelostat - an astronomical instrument with two flat mirrors. One of which is a clock-driven mirror, which would track the Sun and a second fixed mirror was meant to reflect a steady beam of light into a stationary telescope”. The telescope would send the image of the eclipsed Sun to the laboratory established at the base of the tower. The set up was meant to study the spectral readings from the flash spectrograph in order to analyse the chromospheric and coronal radiation.

Interestingly, the villagers were amused, if not fascinated to see so many people thronging to their village that included not just Indians building some temporary tower and setting up experiments, but also foreigners - Czech and Yugoslav teams that set up experiments of their own in the village.

All I remember now about this incident is that we were able to witness this TSE sitting at home (not seeing the TSE directly), and seeing the day turn into night and birds making chirping sounds as if dusk had dawned prematurely. Then there was this superstitious belief about TSE and I must admit, obeying my sister’s advice we all took bath after the TSE and that ended my tryst with my first TSE.

Today, as I look back in history I feel so sorry that such a golden opportunity to witness the diamond ring and the suns corona radiation live was missed and that too in our hometown,

During the course of my research for this article, I have come across a reference that suggests that the IIA team led by Dr RC Kapoor, recorded a special film on a 16mm film projector of their TSE observations from Jalagera. It is believed that this celluloid film was later converted into an audio visual film in VHS format with a commentary by J C Bhattacharya, which was played at Vigyan Bhavan during the 1985 International Astronomical Union (IAU) at Delhi. This film, I understand, is now preserved in the IIA Library.

What is most significant about this TSE and its scientific studies carried out by IIA is that it was spearheaded by one of the doyens of astrophysics in India, Dr Vainu Bappu, the founder of IIA.  He shouldered the responsibility of the scientific expeditions conducted during the 1980 TSE in Karnataka. Unfortunately, he was not there to present the findings of their experiments conducted during their TSE studies across sites in the districts of Raichur and Gadag when this was presented at the IAU in 1985.

Let me end this write up with a brief tribute to Dr Vainu Bappu, who founded IIA.

Recognizing that India lacked adequate advanced equipment to match its intellectual potential, Dr. Bappu spearheaded the creation of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) in 1971. Incidentally, during my tenure (Jan 2011-Jan 2013) as the Director of the Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum (VITM), Bangalore, the Chairman of the Executive Committee -Apex body- of VITM was Prof S Sirajul Hasan, the then Director of IIA Bangalore. Prof Hasan was instrumental in advancing India's initiatives in space-based solar astronomy and fostering international collaborations for major telescope projects.

Dr Manali Kallat Vainu Bappu was instrumental in scouting and establishing the world-class optical observatory at Kavalur, Tamil Nadu. His ultimate dream was to design and construct a massive, entirely indigenous large-aperture stellar telescope. Though he passed away in Munich in August 1982 before its completion, the 2.3-metre instrument that he commissioned was operationalised posthumously and proudly named the Vainu Bappu Telescope (VBT) in his honour.

During the historic Total Solar Eclipse of February 16, 1980, Dr Bappu personally designed and oversaw the massive scientific expeditions in Karnataka, which I have described above. As the Director of IIA, he rallied domestic and international teams to establish the state-of-the-art mega-camp at Jawalagera (Raichur) to tap into the unique, brief window of total darkness. His colleagues recall that he used to walk the camp site grounds daily, fine-tuning the 68-foot high steel coelostat tower and multi-slit spectrographs to capture an unprecedented high-resolution data on the solar corona's temperatures and chemical compositions.

His strategic leadership during this 1980 TSE event transformed what could have been a localised viewing opportunity into an international collaborative triumph, cementing India’s capability to execute complex, global-standard field astronomy.

I will separately be writing another blog about my experience of witnessing live the TSE of 1995 and other subsequent eclipses during the course of my professional career. More importantly I will also be including the transformative TSE that reshaped our understanding of science, which occurred in India in the 19^th century. Until then happy live viewing of the TSE on many websites which are beaming today’s TSE Live.

Images: Courtesy Wikipedia 

 Jai Vigyan

Key words : #TotalSolarEclipse #IIA #1980TSE #Raichur # Totalsolareclipse2026 #VishnuBappu