New year celebration, a hoax?

Celebrations have been an inseparable aspect of human expression since time immemorial. Primitive cavemen celebrated successful kindling of fire, today we celebrate birthdays, marriages, anniversaries, festivities, etc. In all, celebration as an activity can be considered as a manifestation of a joyful mind or a remarkable moment/occasion, for this reason, it is also very subjective in nature, hence how to celebrate and why to celebrate depends on person to person. According to the Cambridge dictionary, celebration as a verb means 'to take part in special enjoyable activities in order to show that a particular occasion is important. Thus proved, joyfulness and happiness are states of mind that can be achieved at all times even for no reason by spirituality but there's always been an underlying rationale for celebrations.

The Calendar crisis

Almost all of us have been celebrating the transition from the previous year to the next in our own ways, nonetheless, the way is not the point worth considering. The question is "who decided this transition and its date?" and why shall we follow them? According to the Julian calendar was introduced by Julius Caesar only in 46 BC. Jan 1 is marked as the new year without any preceding scientific evidence. Though considered a reform to the high irregularity and vagueness of the Roman calendar following lunar phases, the Julian calendar followed solar phases. Even the reforms of Julius Caesar were not adequate to contain the incongruency of dates with astronomical events such as equinoxes and seasons. Julius Caesar added 90 days to 46 BC in an attempt to keep the vernal equinox somewhere around the end of march. Reference: Sosigenes and

https://www.oxfordreference.com, Reform of the julius caesar

 One might think, "why Julius Caesar was trying to calibrate the vernal equinox at the end of march?"

This is not to exaggerate that long ago from the KALI era i.e. from 3101 BCE (according to the Gregorian calendar) to the SAKA era, the vernal equinox has always been in congruence to Chaitra masa(that falls somewhere between march and April according to Julius' system of the calendar). The first lunar day nearest to the vernal equinox is celebrated as New year according to Indic culture known as Chaitra shukla pratipada. Reference: Indian calendar system

 The unsuccessful attempts by western astronomers from Romans to Julius Caesar to scientifically calibrate the lunar and solar phases with equinoxes and manifest them in their calendar , thus ended up in irrational attempts to keep the vernal equinox around the end of March, by adding days or even worse by blatantly declaring fix date of the vernal equinox as happened during the council of Nicaea of Christian bishops in AD 325 i.e. 21 march, declared by Pope Gregory. It would not be wrong to conclude that it was more like an imitation of the lunisolar Hindu calendar as it was for sure more aligned to the astronomical patterns and thus was scientific and legitimate. This Hindu nav Varsha always occurred at the end of March or in early April according to the western calendar hence they might have attempted to correspond their calculations by fixing the date of the everchanging astronomical phenomenon i.e. Spring equinox because there has been no evidence or basis found for fixing the date of the vernal equinox at the end of march by Christians and before them Romans. But unfortunately even this was unsuccessful to what our Vedic calculations proved thousands of years back, the science has just recently been able to prove with complex modern astronomical instruments.

Eventually with the passage of time and the spread of Christianity through conversions, the calendar calculations became more religious in nature than scientific. It is quite interesting that in the 1500s another reform was made when Luigi Giglio inserted the "cycle of epacts" in Julian Calendar which always showed the New moon. But was this any discovery or new invention of the failed astronomers of the west? Certainly not, just by digging deep into the meaning of "epact", it is proved that these were the phases of moon on "22 march". It is always between late march and early April our chaitra shukla pratipada occurs, which marks the beginning of the Hindu new year since way back thousands of years. There is even Puranic evidence apart from mathematical calculations in Brahma Puran which states:

Chaitra Masaya Jagadbrahm Samagre Pratham S Gi

Shukla pakshe samgre tu sada sunyoday sati ||

This means it was on Chaitra masa when Brahma created this world.
It was based on lunisolar calculations. Probably that is why the whole of the western intellectuals emphasized late march by starting to focus on the lunar phases of around 22 march. Later even Easter became in sync with this Chaitra masa which occurs between late march and early April.

New year celebration or calibration?

The Gregorian calendar was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. Designed by Luigi Lilio, decreed by Papal apostle. Reference: 1983grc..book Page 203 (harvard.edu)

So the present New year, celebrated around the world on Jan 1 according to the Gregorian calendar is just because Pope Gregory Christened and labeled the day as New year to calibrate it according to the Feast of Circumcision of Jesus on the eighth day from his birth. There you got it, New year in its present form is all about the foreskin!!. All the so-called secular countries of the world just followed the diktats of the Pope of the Catholic Church. Hence, the New year is purely a religious construct of the church which we follow!

Just think for a moment will the west or the world will mark or celebrate the Hindu New year with the same enthusiasm as we, here in India celebrate the command of the Pope?

India and imposed new year

The decree of the pope spread throughout the Christian majority states and even so-called secular states adopted the Gregorian calendar as their official calendar. Britain enacted the Calendar (new style) act 1750 regulating the commencement of the year in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. India was the colony of Britain and hence the act by default was applied to us, or in other words imposed on us! Thus imposing the date of a Christian event masqueraded as New year.

What happened after Independence?

The Calendar reforms committee was appointed in 1957 under the chairmanship of Prof Meghnad Saha. The committee included some of the best astrophysicists and scientists of the time who were to examine the existing calendars and suggest a uniform and most accurate Calendar system for the whole of India. The committee on page 171 clearly states the unscientific and clumsy system of the Gregorian calendar for the arbitrary length of its months. The committee found Saka samvat as the most accurate of all and suggested using it for official purposes in all states as well as Central governments. That's how on a scientific basis we got our national calendar.

Hence it would not be wrong to call the modern new year celebration a hoax!

In this modern age of science when everything is scrutinized by empirical evidence, the west being the flag bearer and benchmark of modernity for unaware and innocent minds, particularly youth in urban centers, totally unaware in the dipsomaniacal hangover of NEW YEAR, not to mention the thought behind this, that just because west does it, we do it, because they are supreme, white people are our masters, we follow them without raising any questions about the rationale behind their practices, a typical colonial mindset arising from an inferiority complex of Indians which in turn is the result of obscure understanding and awareness about our own culture and past, and disconnection from our roots.

It will require generations to reverse this deracination.

Also read: Saptarishi panchang that starts its calendar back from Mahabharat times and thus questions the credibility of  history we are told of.