The easiest way to travel through time is to cycle through each of the Indian states. For, each region follows their own versions of solar and lunar calendars.

Thus, in North India, you would find yourself celebrating the New Year between April 13 and 15 each year, on Vaisakhi. The states of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh all follow this calendar, call this system Purnimata.

To the West, Gujarat follows the Western Amanta, celebrating the New Year on the second day of Diwali.

Maharashtra follows the Southern Amanta calendar along with Goa, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh. It’s a lunisolar calendar, similar to the Chinese one, where months are called from new Moon to new Moon. New years usually fall at the end of March.

Wrapping up the list are the Southern states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the Eastern and North-Eastern states of West Bengal, Tripura, and Assam; all of which follow solar calendars. In Kerala, the new year begins on the first day of Spring, usually mid-April. Likewise, Tamil Nadu follows this system, as does Tripura.

Considering that these dates match up to the broader regional groupings in India, it seems like a system that works amidst diversity. But following Indian independence, there was a far more chaotic system in place. To start with, nobody could agree on which year it actually was. As the first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote in the preface to the Report on the Calendar Reform Committee in 1952:



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