India’s multiple new years
India has several new years: this is not breaking news to most Indians. But the details behind them might surprise you. It surprised me — a Gujarati Indian, who had spent all her life celebrating the New Year in November. Moving to a bigger, multicultural city like Sydney, I realised what the chaos is about in April.
Between 13 and 15 April, various Indian states mark their New Year — celebrating different harvests, speaking different languages, yet arriving at the same date.
This is not magic, but math. The Solar cycle was the decider here. These festivals, Puthandu (Tamil Nadu), Vishu (Kerala), Pohela Boishakh (West Bengal), Bohag Bihu (Assam) and Baisakhi (Punjab and Haryana), are the “I’ll be there at 7 sharp” people.
Somewhere in the world right now, there’s an HR manager staring at two requests — one from a Bengali and one from a Punjabi, for two different New Year celebrations, with a Tamilian quietly drafting a third. They’re probably going to google, “how many Indian New Years are there?”
However, not everyone got the Sun memo. There are some festivals that come around the same time, but never on the exact same dates. Are they just late to the party? Think again. These ones follow the moon instead, and the moon, romantic as it is, runs about 11 days shorter than the solar year. Left unchecked, your harvest festival slowly drifts in winter. So ancient Indian astronomers added an extra month to balance it out. Problem solved, more or less. These festivals, Ugadi (Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka), Gudi Padwa (Maharashtra, Goa), Navreh (Kashmir), and Cheti Chand (Sindhi New Year) are “I’ll be there at 7-ish” people.
This took me by surprise as Gujarati New Year always falls in October or November after Diwali in winter. As a mercantile state, Gujarat runs on commerce and not crops. At our New Year festival, we pray to Goddess Lakshmi, and perform Chopda Pujan (where traders close their old accounts books and open new ones), wishing for wealth and prosperity. Hence the New Year follows the accounts and not the harvest.
While everyone else is clarifying that their New Year is not on Diwali, Gujaratis are the ironic exception who actually do celebrate their New Year near Diwali. We are the people who accidentally went to a different party.
But, if I’m being honest, I always felt that the Gujarati New Year got buried between Diwali and end-of-the-year chaos. Having a new year in Spring and then celebrating another one in December seems like the perfect balance of parties in between working.
Every January 1, people around the world pick up pristine new diaries and chart out bold transformations — only for the enthusiasm to fade by February.
India’s multiple new years solved that problem. Miss one? Don’t worry, we’ll just catch the next one.
Now in Sydney, far from my roots, my curiosity is teaching me more about ancient astronomy than geographical proximity ever could.
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