Another Link on Nanakshahi Calendar
Posted by Preet Mohan S Ahluwalia
Another Link on Nanakshahi Calendar
Posted by Preet Mohan S Ahluwalia on Monday, 10/16/2000 1:52 PM MDT
| http://www.sikh.net/sikhism/Nanakshahi.htm And http://www.sikh-history.com/sikhhist/archivedf/feature-mar2000.html *************************************************** Sikh scholar defends 'Nanakshahi' calendar he created Times of India february 8, 2000 VANCOUVER: The 67-year-old retired computer engineer who created the controversial 'Nanakshahi' calendar, which has caused a huge row in the Sikh leadership in India, is confident that the calendar will stand the test of time and be unanimously adopted. Edmonton, Canada-based Pal Singh Purewal says the 'Nanakshahi' calendar is based on scientific principles and is fully attuned to the 'Gurbani', the Sikh annals and the universally accepted Common Era calendar. Speaking to The Link weekly newspaper here, Purewal challenged those who alleged the calendar had been formulated overnight to embroil the Sikh leadership in a fresh controversy. He produced records to show that it had been debated at length by scholars over the past six to seven years before being adopted by the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC), then headed by Gurcharan Singh Tohra, in March 1998. The 'Nanakshahi' calendar is based on solar principles, instead of lunar principles. In it Sikh festivals have been fixed for every year and do not keep shifting as in old calendars. Pal Singh Purewal, who originally hails from Shankar village near Nakodar in Jalandhar district, migrated to England in 1965 and moved to Edmonton, Alberta, in Canada in 1974 where he has been living since. He retired as a manager in a data processing company. Purewal, who has been keen on astronomy since his youth, began working on the Sikh calendar in the 1960s. Before this, he had prepared a unique almanac starting from 1469 - the year the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak Dev, was born - and stretching to the year 2000. This almanac, which provides comparative dates of various calendars - 'Bikrami', lunar or solar, Common Era calendar and the Hijri calendar - over a span of 531 years, was published by the Punjab School Education Board in 1994. Preparing the 'Nanakshahi' calendar from year to year was the next step for Purewal, who felt the existing calendar was confusing for the common people with the dates of festivals and the birth anniversaries of Sikh gurus shifting from year to year, making them lose their relevance. For instance, 'Lohri' in the year 532 A.D. was celebrated on December 18 and 'Maghi' on December 19. Now these are celebrated in the middle of January and in another 2000 years, these will shift to the middle ofFebruary. Purewal, who took premature retirement from his job in Edmonton to complete the gargantuan task, reveals that he had pursued the calendar project with the highest Sikh authorities in Amritsar since 1992. He discussed it with the late Sikh scholar, Satbir Singh, in Amritsar in 1992 and 1993. In November 1994, he sent a detailed write-up on the subject to the then acting Jathedar of the Akal Takht, Prof. Manjit Singh, as requested by the SGPC. The SGPC got the new 'Nanakshahi' calendar for 1999 printed in 1998 after its general house passed a resolution adopting it. Its release was timed for the tercentenary of the founding of the Khalsa in April last year, but before that Giani Puran Singh stayed its implementation. Nevertheless, Pal Singh Purewal was honoured by SGPC president Bibi Jagir Kaur, in Amritsar on June 30, 1999. Earlier on February 22, 1999, the SGPC sub-committee that included several Sikh saints, unanimously recognised his contribution in the form of the new calendar and had passed a resolution calling for honouring him.(India Abroad News Service) |
