The new New Year
The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, M. Karunanidhi, announced yesterday that Pongal, the first day of the Tamil month of Thai, will be announced as the Tamil New year’s day and a government directive to this effect will come into force very soon. He claimed that a group of 500 Tamil scholars after various deliberations had finally arrived at the consensus of making Thai as the first month of the Tamil calendar instead of Chithirai, which is currently followed and mostly falls on April 14. But this disagreement over renaming the Tamil New year seems to have had its genesis in 1921 spearheaded by Maraimalai Adigal, a Tamil Scholar who lived during the early 19th century. The Hindu calendar is based on both the solar and lunar movements and has been formulated based on their relative positions to earth. This is based on principles of Surya Siddhanta, a treatise of Indian astronomy written as early as 3rd century BC, which even Indian astronomers such as Arya Bhatta and Varahamihira too have m