Celebrating New Year: An Outcome of a Calendar that Holds the Globe Together

 

Happy New Year

At the dawn of the New Year, while wishing you all a very happy new year greetings, I am reminded that every new year ritualistically people exchange greetings, make resolutions for the new year, replace diaries and refresh digital calendars, to welcome the new year.

The familiarity of this ritualistic path often obscures a deeper truth: the very idea of a “new year” — its beginning, its end, and its internal divisions — is not a given, but a constructed human artefact, Calendars. Though omnipresent, they remain among the lesser examined foundations of civilisation.

At their core, calendars are systems of temporal coordination. They allow societies to synchronise actions, economies to function predictably, cultures to preserve continuity, and states to govern coherently. Like language or currency, calendars operate as shared infrastructure — invisible when functioning smoothly, but deeply disruptive when they fail, as seen in history.

At the heart of the calendar lies humanity’s earliest scientific endeavour: the observation of nature’s – celestial - constants. The alternation of day and night, the phases of the Moon, the cycle of seasons, and the apparent motion of the Sun across the sky. This motivated early humans to organise time and calendar. This was not an abstract pursuit, but an accurate ‘scientific’ method practiced across civilisations to determine when to sow seeds, when to harvest, when rivers would flood, and when religious and ritual observances should occur. A calendar out of sync with seasons was not merely inconvenient — it could be catastrophic.

Calendars have held sacred status across all regions. Its origin comes from the Latin word calendarium / kalendarium - account book or register – used for recording debts. It comes from the word kalendae/ calendae that refers to the first day of each month in the Roman Calendar. While all early civilisations have used one or other forms of time keeping /calendars, the Roman influence of calendars has perpetuated. The Indian calendars/time keeping — based on Panchanga —was fundamentally different from Romans. Indians used Lunisolar observations in their Pachanga, which determined their calendar.

Of the several calendars of antiquity, the Egyptian and the Roman calendars evolved into the Julian calendar, which remained in vogue for 1500 + years. The Roman calendar, introduced around 600 BC, was a lunar calendar and it fell short by 10.25 days of a Solar/ Tropical year. By around 50 BC, notwithstanding the introduction of the extra intercalary month, every two years the calendar had fallen eight weeks behind the Tropical year, leading to Romans to be out of Sync with seasons. There was total confusion when Julius Caesar came to power as the Roman’s 355-day year lunar calendar was 80 days out of sync with seasons.  

With the advice of the famous Greek Egyptian astronomer, Sosigenes, Ceaser made major changes to the extant calendar by abandoning lunar and adopting the solar system of measurement with fixed month lengths making 365 days in a year and an intercalary day every fourth year in February.  To sync the calendar back with Christmas, Ceaser added nearly three extra months to the year 46 BC, making it 445 days long ('the year of confusion'). This led to the new Julian calendar - named after Ceaser - which began on 1st January 45 BC.

The next major correction to the calendars occurred in 1582. Pope Gregory XIII was confronted with a similar situation of the calendar not in sync with the religious season. He therefore, suggested skipping ten days, to the Julian Calendar. This resulted in redefining of the leap year, a year which is a multiple of 4. An exception was added that if the year is a multiple of 100 it is not a leap year. However, if the year is a multiple of 400 it is a leap year.  Applying these principles Pope Gregory XIII, decreed that the day after October 4, 1582, would be October 15, 1582. Adoption of this change was not easy and most European countries took their own time to adopt this new Gregorian calendar with the loss of eleven days.

There was much unrest in the US in adopting to the new Gregorian Calendar, which they adopted in 1752.  'Give us back our eleven days' was a popular campaign slogan.  Many other countries were slow to adopt it and it was not until the early twentieth century that the entire world finally adopted this calendar. The Gregorian calendar is now recognised worldwide although there are still many other calendars running alongside it, for religious purposes. Although the British used the Gregorian calendar in India, Indians continued to use their own regional calendars.    

Use of multiple - regional - calendars in India led to an administrative chaos in independent India. Festivals fell on different dates across regions; official records lacked uniformity. Recognising this problem, independent India undertook a historic exercise in scientific rationalisation of calendars. The Government of India - Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, (CSIR) - appointed a Calendar Reform Committee, in November 1952, under the chairmanship of Dr. Meghnad Saha, “to examine all the existing calendars followed in the country and after a scientific study of the subject, submit proposals for an accurate and uniform calendar for the whole of India". The committee after close examination, recommended a uniform all-India calendar for both civil and religious use. The Government of India accepted the proposal and introduced it as the Indian national calendar with effect from 22nd March 1957.

As another year ends and a new one begins, it is worth pausing before sending that familiar greeting. The turning of the year is not a natural inevitability; it is a human agreement, refined over millennia, shaped by astronomy, mathematics, religion, politics, and social need.

Calendars do not merely tell us what day it is. They tell us who we are as a species — observers of nature, builders of systems, and seekers of synchrony. In recognising the calendar’s quiet power, we acknowledge one of civilisation’s most enduring and least celebrated achievements.

So this New Year, let us celebrate not just the passage of time, but the extraordinary human ingenuity that allows us to measure it — together.

Season’s greetings and a thoughtful New Year.

https://khened.blogspot.com/2021/12/new-year-2022-spare-thought-for.html

Happy New Year.

27 December: Memory, Meaning, Music of Truth, and a Birthday Gift

 

27 December has, over the years, acquired a layered meaning in my life—personal, historical and intellectual, perhaps. It is personal for it happens to be my wife’s birthday. It is also a date that repeatedly invites reflection: on loss and healing, on science and nationhood, and on how history is sometimes misunderstood, sometimes misrepresented, yet always worth defending with evidence.

Last year, unfortunately, grief eclipsed memory. The sudden and untimely passing (on 26 December, 2024) of our Sainik School Bijapur classmate of over five decades, a Mumbaikar, Pradip Talikoti, —our beloved Paddya—left us, more particularly Milind and I, his Mumbai friends, shocked and stunned. The shock of losing a friend with whom Milind and I used to meet very frequently in Mumbai and the last of our meeting and conversations had happened just three days before his passing. In that emotional fog, last year, I had forgotten my wife’s birthday. Yet, it was she who gently steered me back—reminding me, with characteristic grace, that writing has always been my way of negotiating sorrow. It was through her quiet understanding that my grief of losing a friend was transformed into scientific reflection.

Two days later (29 December, 2024) I wrote—about Charles Darwin setting sail aboard HMS Beagle on 27 December 1831, an event that altered humanity’s understanding of life itself.  Here is a link to my the subject post https://khened.blogspot.com/2024/12/forgetting-wifes-birthday-27-december.html

A year before – 27 December 2023, I had chosen another historical moment to mark her birthday—the first public rendition of Jana Gana Mana on 27 December 1911 at the Indian National Congress session in Calcutta. Here is the link the subject blog https://khened.blogspot.com/2023/12/27-december-jana-gana-mana-national.html

Each year, unknowingly perhaps, this date has allowed me to place personal emotion within a wider historical canvas.

This year, as my wife marks her birthday today, I wish to do something slightly different: to briefly recall those earlier reflections, but to primarily address a historical falsehood that continues to circulate about Jana Gana Mana. This clarification, rooted in documentary evidence and scholarly consensus, is my birthday gift to my wife this year: an offering devoid of any material gifts, but of truth, memory, and intellectual honesty.

The Persistent Myth: Was Jana Gana Mana Written in Praise King George V?

The claim that Rabindranath Tagore composed Jana Gana Mana to welcome King George V during his 1911 visit to India is historically incorrect. Yet, more than a century later, it continues to surface—sometimes through ignorance, sometimes through ideological mischief – on the social media and this year it was perhaps more prominent in wake of the Parliamentary debate on the National Song, Vande Mataram, an equally important national identity, which marked its sesquicentennial year this year.

It is significant to recall what actually happened on 27 December 1911 during the Indian National Congress Session in Calcutta (now Kolkata) to address the myth surrounding the National Anthem – Jana Gana Mana, composed  by Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, which is well-documented

That day, two different songs were sung at the Indian National Congress session in Calcutta:

1. “Jana Gana Mana”, composed by Rabindranath Tagore, was sung in the morning session.

2. “Badshah Hamara”, a separate song explicitly written in praise of the British monarch, was sung later the same day during a different event connected to the Delhi Durbar celebrations.

The confusion—and later controversy—arose largely due to British-leaning sections of the press, which either carelessly or deliberately conflated the two performances. Some newspapers reported that the Congress session had welcomed the King-Emperor through a song composed by Tagore. This was factually wrong, and intellectually dishonest.

Tagore himself categorically rejected this interpretation. In later correspondence, including his well-known letter of 1937, he clarified that the “Adhinayaka” addressed in Jana Gana Mana referred not to any earthly monarch but to the timeless moral and spiritual guide of humanity—what he described as the Bhagya Vidhata, the dispenser of destiny. To Tagore, equating that concept with a colonial ruler was not merely incorrect; it was philosophically absurd.

Why the Confusion Persisted

The endurance of this falsehood tells us something important about how history gets distorted, for vested interest. Colonial reportage often lacked contextual fidelity, and nationalist cultural expressions were frequently misrepresented to suit imperial optics. Over time, repetition hardened error into “fact” for those unwilling to consult primary sources. Later, in independent India, selective quotation and ideological agendas kept the controversy alive—despite overwhelming scholarly consensus to the contrary.

Yet, a simple reading of Jana Gana Mana—with its invocation of India’s geography, peoples, and civilizational unity—makes the monarch-welcome theory untenable. There is no king named, no empire praised, no sovereign flattered. Instead, there is a nation being imagined—decades before it would formally exist.

A Song That Outgrew Its Moment

When Jana Gana Mana was formally adopted as India’s national anthem on 26 January 1950, after extensive debate in the Constituent Assembly, it was not chosen in a hurry or light heartedly. It was chosen precisely because it transcended politics of the moment and spoke to the enduring idea of India. Incidentally, the same Constituent Assembly accorded the status of the national song to Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Vande Mataram, whose sesquicentennial year we celebrate this year.  

Both the national anthem and the national song and their impactful power continue to manifest—in school assemblies, Republic Day parades, and unforgettable collective moments such as the spontaneous mass singing during national events and sporting arena like the one that we witnessed during the India–Pakistan World Cup match in Ahmedabad. In such moments, the anthem ceases to be mere music; it becomes lived experience and so does the national song.

Why This Matters— Birthday Gift

Contrary to my wife, whose family indulges in showering material birthday gifts, yours truly comes from a milieu where birthdays were / are marked not by extravagance but by reflection—temple visits, blessings of elders, and quiet gratitude. That sensibility has shaped my life and my wife has begun to appreciate it. Writing - my passion - as a gift, therefore, my wife feels is more appropriate as a birthday gift than any material gift. This essay is therefore for her—for her patience, her understanding our family ethos, and her unwavering belief in my understanding that ideas matter, truth matters, and memory matters. It is also for my friend Paddya, whose sudden departure reminded me how fragile time is, and how essential it is to record what we know to be true.

And finally, it is for 27 December itself—a date that reminds me, year after year, that personal lives and world history are not parallel lines, but intersecting stories.

Happy Birthday my dear life partner.

May truth always find its voice, memory always find its words, and Jana Gana Mana continue to remind us who we are.

Jai Hind.

Ramanujan, π, and the Universe

Ramanujan, π, and the Universe: How a Century-Old Indian Genius Shapes Modern Astrophysics

Today, 22 December 2025, on the occasion of the 138th Jayanthi of Srinivasa Ramanujan, which is also the day when we celebrate the National Mathematics Day in India, it is an honour for me to be penning this tribute to the legendary mathematician. While commemorating the 125th birthday of Srinivasan Ramanujan in 2012, we developed an exhibition “ Srinivasa Ramanujan: The Man Who Knew Infinity”, borrowing the title of the exhibition from the monumental book authored by Robert Kanigel. This exhibition was opened at the Visvesvaraya Museum, Bangalore, which I headed when this exhibition was opened. Some of the images of the exhibition and its opening accompany this article. Incidentally, as a mark of respect for the nation to the legendary Ramanujan, the Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh, had declared that Ramanujan’s birthday will be celebrated as National Mathematics Day, and ever since, this day is celebrated as Mathematics Day across India.

Srinivasa Ramanujan is one of India’s greatest scientific minds, and among the most extraordinary mathematicians the world has ever known. Over a century after his brief life ended at just 32, Ramanujan continues to surprise us and remain an enigma — not merely as a historical genius, but as a living influence on modern science. 

Recent research by Indian physicists at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, has once again brought Ramanujan into contemporary scientific conversation — this time in connection with modern theoretical physics, including areas that underpin our understanding of black holes, gravitational waves, and extreme cosmic phenomena. This serves as a remarkable reminder that ideas born in pure mathematics can, decades later, illuminate the deepest mysteries of the universe.

From Kumbakonam to Cambridge: A Journey Like No Other.

Ramanujan’s story has been told often, yet it never loses its power. Born in 1887 on this day, 22 December, in Erode and raised in Kumbakonam, Ramanujan had almost no access to formal mathematical education. What he possessed instead was an extraordinary intuitive ability to see patterns that eluded trained mathematicians. Ramanujan attributed his mathematical genius to his deity, Namagiri Thayer.

By his early twenties, while working as a clerk at the Madras Port Trust, Ramanujan filled notebooks with thousands of original mathematical results. In 1913, he took the bold step of writing to G. H. Hardy at Cambridge, enclosing several pages of theorems — many without proofs, but dazzling in their originality. Perhaps the habit of recording theorems without formal proofs was shaped, at least in part, by Ramanujan’s early self-study of G. S. Carr’s Synopsis of Elementary Results, a mathematical compendium that deliberately avoided proofs and emphasised results—a format that deeply influenced his early mathematical development.

That letter changed history. Hardy immediately recognised Ramanujan’s genius and brought him to England. Within a few years, Ramanujan became a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and later one of the youngest ever Fellows of the Royal Society — an astonishing rise for a self-taught mathematician from colonial India. 

Ramanujan and the Mystery of π

Among Ramanujan’s many contributions, his work on π (pi) holds a special place. π — the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter — is one of the most fundamental constants in mathematics and science. For centuries, mathematicians tried to calculate its value more efficiently.

In 1914, Ramanujan published a paper containing 17 astonishing formulas that allowed π to be calculated with unprecedented speed and accuracy. Each formula converged so rapidly that just a few steps produced many correct digits — something unheard of at the time. Knowing well how intimidating the math equation appears to most of us, let us not worry about the technicalities of the equation, but one of his most famous results — often described as almost magical —,  looks like this:

 This I known as the Rapid Convergence. It is interesting to note that in this famous equation, each successive term in the series adds approximately eight decimal places of accuracy to the value of 𝜋.  For many years, this enchanting, yet enigmatic series remained unproven. It was finally rigorously proven by the Borwein brothers in 1987.

Even today, modern supercomputers calculating trillions of digits of π use algorithms that descend directly from Ramanujan’s ideas.

Why Physicists Are Talking About Ramanujan in 2025

Suddenly, there is a newfound interest in Ramanujan. For many decades, Ramanujan’s π formulas were admired mainly as mathematical marvels. But a natural question lingered: Why do such extraordinary formulas exist at all?

Fortunately, very recently, Indian academics Professor Aninda Sinha and Faizan Bhat, working at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, have worked on this and have explored this question from a physicist’s perspective. Their research shows that the same mathematical structures underlying Ramanujan’s π formulas also appear in a class of modern physical theories known as conformal field theories.

These theories are not abstract curiosities. They form part of the mathematical language used today to understand: systems that behave similarly at different scales, turbulence and critical phenomena, and theoretical models connected to black holes and gravitational physics. In simple terms, the mathematics Ramanujan discovered intuitively over a century ago turns out to be deeply aligned with the mathematics needed to describe extreme and complex physical systems.

This does not mean Ramanujan was “calculating black holes” — but it does mean that his insights anticipated structures that physicists now encounter when probing the universe at its most fundamental level.

From Pure Thought to Cosmic Frontiers

One of the striking lessons from this research is the power of pure mathematics. Ramanujan was not trying to solve engineering problems or explain astronomical observations. He followed patterns that felt true to him.

Yet today, similar mathematical ideas help physicists simplify extremely complex calculations, improve theoretical models related to gravity and quantum systems, and strengthen the mathematical backbone of research into gravitational waves and black hole behaviour. This bridge — from intuition to abstraction, from numbers to the cosmos — is what makes Ramanujan’s legacy so extraordinary.

A Personal Note

I have had the privilege of engaging deeply with Ramanujan’s life and work over the years. In 2012, during the celebration of his 125th birth anniversary, while serving as Director of the Visvesvaraya Industrial & Technological Museum, Bengaluru, we developed the exhibition “Ramanujan: The Man Who Knew Infinity.” The exhibition travelled widely and appealed to thousands of visitors, reaffirming the power of storytelling in science communication. Some of the images that accompany this write-up are from that exhibition. Incidentally, the title of the exhibition was borrowed from Robert Kanigel's “ Srinivas Ramanujan: The Man Who Knew Infinity”, which Kanigel was happy to lend us.

I have also written extensively on Ramanujan’s life and contributions: I am sharing some of the blog links and links to downloading my articles below for those who may be interested 

Why Ramanujan Still Matters

As we celebrate Ramanujan’s Jayanthi today, his story reminds us of something profound: Great ideas do not belong to a single time, place, or discipline. A young clerk in Madras, guided by intuition and passion, produced mathematics that continues to resonate — not only in number theory, but in the very equations physicists use to explore the universe.

Ramanujan’s life teaches us that imagination, when coupled with perseverance, can transcend centuries. That is why Ramanujan is not merely remembered — he is still relevant.

Listed below are links to the two-part tribute to Ramanujan that I had written, which were published in Dream 2047 in February 2022 and March 2023 issues. 

Link to part 1, Feb. 2022 issue 

https://www.indiascienceandtechnology.gov.in/sites/all/themes/vigyan/pdf_file/newsletter_dreams_2047/2022/dream-feb-2022-eng.pdf\

Link to Part 2, March 2022 Issue

https://www.indiascienceandtechnology.gov.in/sites/all/themes/vigyan/pdf_file/newsletter_dreams_2047/2022/dream-march-2022-eng.pdf

Here is a link to my blog tribute paid to Ramanujan on his birth anniversary in 2021.

https://khened.blogspot.com/2021/12/srinivas-ramanujan-namagiri-gifted-math.html

Long live the legacy of Ramanujan, and may he continue to inspire generations to come

Images: Courtesy National Council of Science Museums and Wikipedia