Reason behind the calender ayank
While teaching kids in the community, many questions came up like why Diwali comes on different days in the year. Why is there no consistency in Indian festivals? With adults, there is the belief that the Indian calendar is based on tribal knowledge and that there is no science behind it. Some people feel that the Indian calendar (Panchang) is too difficult to understand. Some of you in USA are using the Kalnirnay calendar created for the Indian region and then apply a 12-hour time difference to events. You may not realize that the Indian calendar is Luni-Solar and tied to geographical location. Applying a 12-hour solar difference to it will not yield correct results between India and USA regions. To address these topics, it was realized that we have to change the baseline itself. We are trained to use the English calendar as the reference and then we are trying to map our culture to it. As part of colonization, British removed the foundation of the Indian culture – its calendar. Holidays were provided on Sundays instead of Pournima or Amavasya. Then, everything from festivals, healthy fasting cycles to nature association were ridiculed to impose the British superiority. Namaskar Indian calendar flips the format and brings back the original baseline. Once the mind is oriented, you will appreciate tremendous consistency. Every event or festival has a close bond with nature. Those include planets, trees, animals, and various seasons in the year. The intention is to highlight tremendous science and showcase the results of complex mathematics in a simple form.
This calendar has a unique format. 12 Indian months – Chaitra, Vaishakh up to Falgun are on 12 pages. The days are shown for each Paksha from 1 to 15. An explanation for each event or festival is provided on the backside of each page in kid’s friendly language. The calendar is based on the location of San Diego for USA/Canada region It is available in 3 languages – Marathi, Telugu and Gujarati. For India region, Pune location is used for the calendar and it is available in Marathi language