Hindu Calendar 2025 with Holidays and Festivals List, Download PDF ,

The following holidays will be observed in the Embassy of India, The Hague during the calendar   year 2025:-

S.No.	Holidays	Date	Day
1.	New Year’s Day	01 January	Wednesday
2.	Republic Day	26 January	Sunday
3.	Holi	14 March	Friday
4.	Good Friday	18 April	Friday
5.	Easter Monday*	21 April	Monday
6.	Buddha Purnima	12 May	Monday
7.	Id-ul-Zuha (Bakrid)	07 June	Saturday
8.	Whit Monday*	09 June	Monday
9.	Rath Yatra	27 June	Friday
10.	Muharram	06 July	Sunday
11.	Independence Day	15 August	Friday
12.	Janmashtami	16 August	Saturday
13.	Id-e-Milad (Prophet Mohammad’s birthday)	05 September	Friday
14.	Mahatma Gandhi’s Birthday	02 October	Thursday
15.	Dusshera (additional day)	03 October	Friday
16.	Diwali	20 October	Monday
17.	Guru Nanak’s Birthday	05 November	Wednesday

INDIANCALENDARS

 The word Calendar has its origin from the Roman word Calends or Kalends meaningamethodofdistributingtimeintocertainperiodsadoptedforthe purpose of civil life.

Thus a calendar may be defined as a system of reckoning time over extended intervals by combining various convenient periods of time.

Before we go into the details of various calendars used in India let us first understand basic quantities which are integral part of any calendar.

TheTime

 Itmay beunders to odin one of the following two ways:

• isthegeneraltermfortheconsciousexperienceof
• istheintervalbetweentwonon-simultaneousoccurrenceof

In physics time and space are considered fundamental quantities and hence they can not be measured in terms of any other quantities. Thus the only definition possible is an operational one in which time is defined by process ofmeasurement of an interval and the units chosen.

Measurement of Time : It involves establishing a precise system of reference for specifying when any event occurs i.e. specifying an epoch and establishing a standard interval of time.

Astronomy and civil affairs are concerned with both epoch and time interval whereas physics deals almost entirely with time intervals.

Oursensesarenotagoodjudgeofequalintervalsandifanyaccuracyis required then a clock of some sort must be used. A clock, in general sense, may bedefinedasanythingwhichcanbeusedtomeasureanelapsedintervalof time.

In nature there are phenomena that recur at regular intervals and hence can be used as a clock and for defining units of time. Some artificial units of time, which are not connected withany natural phenomenon,arealso used forconvenience in civil use.

Variousunitsoftimebothnaturalandartificialinuseare :

NaturalUnitsofTime:Day,Month,Year

ArtificialUnitsofTime:Hour,Minutes,Seconds,Week,Decade,Centuryetc.

NaturalUnitsofTime

 

The year is defined by a complete revolution of the Sun in the sky along the ecliptic,themonthbyacompleterevolutionoftheMoonaroundtheEarthand the day by a complete rotation of the Earth on its axis.

 

Wecandefinetheyearinthefollowingways.

 

The Sidereal Year : It the time required by the Sun to make a complete circuit of the ecliptic (apparent path of the Sun in the sky) i.e. moving exactly 360^o. The length of this year is 365.256363 mean solar days (msd).

 

The Tropical Year : It is the average time interval between two consecutive passagesoftheSunthroughthevernalequinox(theγpoint).Asthispoint moves backwards due to precession the Sun covers slightly less than 360^o. The length of tropical year is 365.242190 msd.

 

Therelationshipbetweensiderealandtropicalyearsis:

 

SiderealYear:TropicalYear=360^o:(360^o–50.”29)

 

For civil purposes it is more convenient to use the tropical year which is closely related to seasons.

 

Liketheyearthemonthisdefinedinthefollowingways.

 

Sidereal Month : It is the interval of two consecutive passages of the Moon from some point on the ecliptic to the same point again.

Itslengthis27.321661msd.

 

Synodic Month : It is the interval from new-moon to next new moon or from onefull moon to next full moon. Its length is 29.530588 msd.

 

Thedayisdefinedbythealterationofdaylightandnight.Thisdurationistaken in one of the following ways for civil and calendar use.

 

• SunrisetoSun rise :usedinHinducalendars
• SunsettoSunset :usedinIslamiccalendars
• midnighttomidnight :usedinGregorianCalendar
• noontonoon :usedinastronomy

 

The Mean Solar Time : Our civil life greatly depends on the position of the Sun in the sky. But the Sun’s apparent motion in the sky is non-uniform due to its motion in an elliptic orbit (Kepler’s 2nd law) and the obliquity of the ecliptic. Hence thetruesolartimevariesthroughouttheyear,whichisnotconvenientforcivil

 

purposes. Therefore a mean solar time was introduced; it is based on a fictitious Sun which moves along the equator with uniform speed but takes exactly thesametimetomakeonecompleterevolutionasthetruesuntakesinmoving along the ecliptic.

 

The difference between the true solar time and the mean solar times is called the equationoftime.This is the same as the difference between the Sun dial time and the local mean time at any place.

 

During a yearthe equation of time attains the following extreme values. Date :    Feb. 12            May 14                                           Jul. 26        Nov. 4 Equation of time:   -14^m.3                       +3^m.7                                                  -6^m.4             +16^m.4

The mean solar day used above is the average time interval between two successive passages of the Sun over the meridian of a place i.e. average time between one noon to the next.

 

Mean solar time is different for each meridian. To simplify things Earth has been dividedintodifferenttimezones.Eachcountryadoptsasuitabletimezonefor the entire country. For example the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) or Universal Time (UT) is the mean solar time for the Greenwich meridian. The IndianStandard Time (IST) is the mean solar time at a meridian 5h 30m east of Greenwich. The time is measured starting with 0^h.00 at midnight and ending with 24^h at the next midnight.

 

ArtificialUnitsofTime

 

The Week : The most common of all artificial periods of time is the week, which is a period of seven days. Originally it was not an integral part of any calendar. It gradually became established in its present form in the Roman Calendar during 1 or 2 BC. After getting established the cycle of succession of the days of the week has not been altered and no breaks in the sequence have occurred.

 

Order of the week days : Ancients recognized the order of planets by the timethey took to complete a circumference of the heavens. The order was Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Astrologically each of the seven planets was supposed to rule in turn over various hours of the day in successionin the order Saturn to Moon. The day is named after the planet which rules thefirst hour. Thus if Saturn is the ruler of the first hour of the day then Jupiter will be ruler of the second hour and so on. Thus Sun will be the ruler of the 25^th hour or the first hour of the next day. In this way Saturday is followed by Sunday and so on.

 

Decade:Itisaperiodof10years.

 

 

Century:Itisa periodof100years.(Juliancentury =36525msd)

 

Otherdivisionare:Hour Minutes Seconds	= = =	1/24ofaday 1 / 60 of an hour1/60ofaminutes
HinduCalendarDivisions:Savandin		=	60Ghati(24Hours)
Pahar		=	1/8ofadin(3Hours)
Pal		=	1/60ofaghati (24seconds)

 

Kalpa	=	4.3×109years
Manvantar	=	3.08×108years(1/14ofaKalpa)
MahaYuga	=	4.32×106years(1/71ofaManvantar)
KrataYuga	=	1.73×106years(4/10ofaMahayuga)
TretaYuga	=	1.30x 106years(3/10ofaMahayuga)
DwaparYuga	=	8.64×105years(2/10ofaMahayuga)
Kali Yuga	=	4.32×105years(1/10ofaMahayuga)

 

 

CategoriesofCalendars

 

Allcalendarsusedthroughoutthewordcanbegroupedintothefollowingthree categories.

 

• The Solar Calendars : These calendars are based on the yearlymotion of the Sun, which could be either sidereal or tropical. Roman, French, Gregorian calendars are solar calendars where tropical year is used as the year length where asIndian solar calendars followed in Assam, Bengal, Tripura, Haryana, Punjab, Orrisa, Tamil Nadu and Kerla, etc. are having sidereal year as the year length oftheir

 

• The Lunar Calendars : Lunar calendar is based on the monthly cycleof phases of the Moon i.e. synodic monthand has no relation with the yearly motion of the Sun. Islamic Hejira Calendar is a pure lunar

 

• The Luni-Solar Calendars : These calendars take into account boththemonthlymotionoftheMoonandtheyearlymotionoftheSun. Jews and Babylonian calendars are luni-solar calendars. Indiacalendars used in Andhra Pradesh, Gujrat, Maharastra, Karnataka, Bihar, Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh etc areluni-solar calendars.

 

TheRequirementofanIdealCalendar

 

• Thecivilyearandmonthmusthaveanintegralnumberof
• Thestatingdayoftheyearandofthemonthshouldbesuitably defined. The dates must correspond strictly to seasons.
• For purpose of continuous dating an Era should be used and it should be properly defined.
• Thecivildaysshouldbeproperlydefinedforuseinthe
• Iflunarmonthshavetobekeptthenthereshouldbeconvenient devices for seasonal adjustments (i.e. with solar year)

 

A correct and satisfactory solution to the above requirements has not yet been obtained. The main reason being the non-commensurability of various natural periods. Many attempts to find solutions to these problems have resulted in hundreds of calendars which have been used throughout the word duringhistorical times.

India, being a very ancient civilization with arich history and cultural diversification, developed its own methods of time keeping. These methods vary slightly in different regions and thus many different systems of Indian (Hindu) calendar making emerged.

 

In the following we explain the salient features of the Solar, the Lunar and theLuni-solar calendars.

 

SolarCalendar

 

A solar calendar is designed to approximate the tropical year or sidereal yearusing days. As there are no integral number of days in a actual solar yeartherefore in order to synchronize thecalendar with the actual year length of a solar year days are sometimes added, forming leap years, to increase theaverage length of the calendar year. A solar calendar year can be divided into months but these months ignore the lunar month.

The Gregorian calendar is a solar calendar with a common year having 365 days and a leap year having 366 days. Every fourth year is a leap year unless it is a century year not divisible by 400. The Indian national Calendar is also a solar calendar about which we will discuss later.

 

LunarCalendar

 

A lunar calendar consists of 12 lunar months forming a year with each month covering the period between two successive new moons. Each lunar month hasan average length of about 29.5 days. This amounts to about 12 x 29.5 = 354daysayeari.e.around11daysshorterthanthetropicalyear.Hencealunar

 

calendardoes not remain in tune with the seasons, which depend on the motion of the Sun in a tropical year.

 

The Muslim calendar is a lunar calendar. We can see that the muslim festivals always fall about 11 days earlierinthe next Gregorian calendar year.

 

LunisolarCalendar

 

Alunisolarcalendarisdesignedtokeepinphasewiththetropicalyearor sidereal year while using lunar months. As we have seen above that 12 lunar monthsareshortbyabout11dayscomparedtoasolaryear,henceawhole lunar month is occasionally added at every few years interval (about 2.5 years) to help the calendar keep up with the solar year. This additional month is known as the leap month or the intercalary month.

TheIndianluni-solarcalendarsaremadetobeintunewiththesidereal year instead of the tropical year.

 

TheIndianSolarCalendars

 

There are about four solar calendars used in India. They are constructed using similar calendrical rules. As stated above the year is sidereal instead of tropical. The basic structure of the Indian solar calendar is the following.

 

The sidereal year is called the nirayana year andis the actual time required for the Earth to revolve once around the Sun with respect to a starting point on the ecliptic that is taken to be directly opposite the bright star called Chitra. The longitude of the star Chitra from this point is 180^o. The Indian solar calendar is made to keep in phase with the nirayana year. The starting point of the nirayana year coincided with the March Equinoxin the year AD 285. Since the stars are fixed with respect to the ecliptic, the starting point remains unchanged, hence the name nirayana.

 

TheSolarMonths

 

Theeclipticisdividedinto12divisionsof30^oeachcalledrasis.Thefirstrasi starts from the same point as that of the start the nirayana year. A solar month is determined by the entrance of the Sun into a rasi. The length of a solar month is the time taken for the Sun to travel completely in the rasi, that is, to travel 30^o ofits elliptical orbit. Hence a nirayana year has 12 solar months. Since the solar calendar has several local variations, the start of the nirayana year and names of the month may differ. The following table gives the names of the rasis and their corresponding solar months in several solar calendars. The months in bold indicates the start of the nirayana year in that region.

 

Relationshipsbetweenrasisandsolarmonths

Rasi No.	Nameof Rasi	Name                of corresponding solar    month    in most solar calendars	Name of corresponding solar month in the Tamil solar calendar	Name                 of corresponding solar month      in      the Malayali (Kerala) solar calendar
1	Mesha	Vaisakha	Chittirai	Mesha
2	Vrish	Jyaistha	Vaikasi	Vrisha
3	Mithuna	Ashadha	Ani	Mithuna
4	Karkata	Sravana	Adi	Karkata
5	Simha	Bhadra	Avani	Simha
6	Kanya	Asvina	Purattasi	Kanya
7	Tula	Kartika	Arppissi	Tula
8	Vrischika	Agrahayana (Margasirsha)	Karthigai	Vrischika
9	Dhanus	Pausha	Margali	Dhanus
10	Makara	Magha	Thai	Makara
11	Kumbha	Phalguna	Masi	Kumbha
12	Mina	Chaitra	Panguni	Mina

 

As per Kepler’s second law the Sun’s motion around the Earth, is not uniform.This causes the length of each solar month to vary. The mean length of a solar monthisabout30.4369daysbutitsactuallengthcanvaryfrom29.45daysto

31.45 days. The entry of the Sun into a rasi is called a samkranti and therefore there are 12 samkrantis in a nirayana year.

 

Rulesfordecidingthebeginningofa solarmonth

 

Thesamkranticanoccuratanytimeoftheday.Henceitisnotconvenientto start a solar month at the exact time of a concerned samkranti. Instead, the beginning of a solar month is chosen to be from a sunrise that is close to the concerned samkranti. Consequently, the civil day becomes the basic unit of the Indian solar calendar.

From the actual length of a solar month, we see that each solar month can have29 to 32 days. Solar months with their corresponding rasis near the aphelion will most probably have 32 days while solar months that are linked to rasis near the perihelion will likely to have 29 days. In other words, months with corresponding rasis Vrisha, Mithuna and Karkata can have 32 days while months with corresponding rasis Vrischika, Dhanus and Makara can have 29 days.

For determining the starting day of a solar month, there are several rules of samkranti that are followed. Some of the common rules are:

 

1. TheOrissarule

Solarmonthbeginsonthesamedayasthesamkranti.

 

2. TheTamilrule

Solarmonthbeginsonthesamedayasthesamkrantiifthesamkrantifalls before the time of sunset on that day. Otherwise the month begins on thefollowing day.

 

3. TheMalayalirule

Solar month begins on the same day as the samkranti if the samkranti occurs before the time of aparahna on that day. Otherwise the month starts on the following day.

(Aparahna is the time at 3/5th duration of the period from sunrise to sunset. For example if the times of sunrise and sunset are 6am and 6pm respectively. Then the time of the aparahna = [(3/5) x (18 – 6) + 6]am = 1.12pm.)

 

4. TheBengalrule

When samkranti takes place between the time of sunrise and midnight on thatday, the solar month begins on the following day. If it occurs after midnight, the month begins on the next following day, that is, the third day. This is the general rule. In some special circumstances, there are some deviations from this rule.

 

We shall call the solar calendars following the four stated rules in the order above as the Orissa, Tamil, Malayali and Bengal calendars respectively. There exists other diversification but we will not discuss them here.

 

TheCalendarorCivilYearandtheSolarEras

 

As mentioned in the above table Orissa, Tamil and Bengal calendars begin their civil year with the solar month that corresponds to the Mesha rasi. The Malayali calendar starts the year at the solar month that links with the Simha rasi.

 

The solar eras being used in the solar calendars are the Kali Yuga, the Saka, the Bengali San and the Kollam eras.

 

Regions      in     India     using      the     Indian      solar     and     luni-solar      calendars

 

Itmaybenotedthatthefollowingdifferencesarisein                        Indiansolarcalendars used in different regions.

 

1. Thestartingday ofthesolarmonthmaydifferbyoneortwodaysindifferent parts of India.

 

2. Thenumberofdaysofdifferentsolar monthsalsovariesfrom29to

 

3. The length of the solar month (number of days in that month)is not fixed butchanges from year to year.

 

Likewise there are differences in luni-solar calendars of different regions. The month in some start from new moon while in others it starts from full moon. The beginning of year also differs. It may be from Chaitra, Kartika or Asadha.

 

TheIndianNationalCalendar

 

Noting that there are slight differences in various calendars used in India, The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Government of India,appointed a Calendar Reform Committee in November 1952 under the chairmanship of the renowned scientist Dr. Meghnad Saha. The committee’s objective was to examine all existing calendars used in India and to propose an accurateanduniformall-Indiacalendarforbothcivilandreligioususe.After close examination, the Committee recommended a unified solar calendar for civil use. The Government of India accepted the proposal and introduced it as the Indian national calendar with effect from 22 March 1957. However theGovernment continued to use the Gregorian Calendar for administrative use.

 

The proposedNational Calendar is a modification of the existing Indian solar calendars. The principle unit of the calendar remains the civil day. The solar era chosen is the Saka national era. The following features are different from the traditional Indian solar calendars.

 

The national calendar is made to approximate the tropical or the sayana year and not the traditional sidereal or nirayana year.

 

ThecalendaryearstartsonthedayaftertheMarchEquinoxday.

 

Unlike the traditional solar calendars the solar months have fixed number of days restricted to either 30 or 31 days.

 

This length still depended on the time taken for the Sun to travel the concerned tropical rasi instead of sidereal rasi.The first rasi Mesh begins at the March equinox which is also the starting point of the sayana year. The five months from thesecondtothesixthhavemeanlengthsover30.5daysandsotheirlengths are rounded up to 31 days. The remaining months have 30 days. Names for the solar months are kept the same as those of the Indian solar calendar listed in colunm 3 of the above table. However, the first month is named as Chaitra, followed by Vaisakha and so on.

 

LengthsofdifferentsolarmonthsreckonedfromtheMarchEquinox

Name        of months       in the traditional solar calendar	Ecliptic    arc covered    by the          Sun measured from the March Equinox point	Mean time takenbythe Sunto cover       the respective 30o      arc	Integral numberof        Days Taken	Name     of monthsin the National solar calendar	Gregorian Calendar dates           of beginningof National Calendar Months
Vaisakha	0o– 30o	30d11h25m.2	30d31d in a leapyear	Chaitra	22March 21March(In caseofleap year)
Jyaistha	30o–60o	30d23h29m.6	31d	Vaisakha	21April
Ashadha	60o–90o	31d    8h10m.1	31d	Jyaistha	22May
Sravana	90o–120o	31d10h54m.6	31d	Ashadha	22June
Bhadra	120o–150o	31d6h53m.1	31d	Sravana	23July
Asvina	150o–180o	30d21h18m.7	31d	Bhadra	23August
Kartika	180o–210o	30d    8h58m.2	30d	Asvina	23September
Agrahayana	210o–240o	29d21h14m.6	30d	Kartika	23October
Pausha	240o–270o	29d13h      8m.7	30d	Agrahaya na	22November
Magha	270o–300o	29d10h38m.6	30d	Pausha	22December
Phalguna	300o-330o	29d14h18m.5	30d	Magha	21January
Chaitra	330o-360o	29d23h18m.9	30d	Phalguna	20February

 

The occurrence of leap years in the National Calendar is made to fall in the same leap year as that in the Gregorian Calendar to keep the relation of the dates between these two calendars the same. When leap year occurs, Chaitra would have 31 days instead of 30 days.

 

However, most calendar-makers do not accept the National calendar mainly because the sayana system was adopted instead of the nirayana system. Tothem,thischangewastoodrasticbecausetraditionallysolarcalendarsarekept inlinewiththenirayanayearandthecalendar-makerswouldnotwantto abandon this principle.

Thereforeallthecalendarsbothsolarandluni-solarexistingbeforethe formation of the Calendar Reforms Committee continue to be used.

 

 

 

Dr.G.M.BALLABH

(Retd.ProfessorofAstronomy)

 

Acknowledgement:

 

The Indian Map is adapted from the dissertation on Indian Calendars of Mr. Leow Choon Lian of Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, National University of Singapore (2000/ 2001).

 

FurtherReading:

1. Report of the Calendar Reform Committee, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, New Delhi, India (1955).

 

2. Abhyankar, K. D. & Ballabh G. M., “Kaliyuga Saptarsi, Yudhisthira and Laukika Era”, Indian Journal of History of Science, 31.1 (1996) 13-34

 

3. Indian Calendric System, Commodore S. K. Chatterjee (Retd.) Publication Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India (1998).

 

4. Abhyankar, K. D., “Earliest Vedic Calendar”, Indian Journal of History of Science, 40.1 (2005) 1-8.