Makara Sankranti is a festival in India which is celebrated in winter. Makar means zodiac sign of Capricornus and Sankraman means transition. The sun enters makara Rasi on that day. We know it comes on 14th or 15th January. We wonder how it coincides mostly with English dates.While all other festivals are celebrated as per lunar calendar, Pongal( makara sankranthi ) is based on solar calendar on Which English calendar also is based. On a careful observation from 2001 to 2008, we see that in 2004 and 2008 ,it fell on 15th Jan, and all other years it was on 14th. Can we infer that Sankranthi falls on Jan 15th every Leap year? Examining the table, we can roughly infer that Sankranti occurs on 15th Jan in a leap year. We find that transition into Makaram occurs 6hrs 9mts later every year.In 4 years it will become 24 hrs 36 mts pushing Sankranthi from 14th to 15th Jan and in all those years entry into Makaram is after sunset. Accumulation of 36 mts push Sankranthi forward as a matter of routine. In short, the pattern of Sankranti which previously was 14-14-14-15, changed to 14-14-15-15 in the period 2009-2012. Few years later it will become 14-15-15-15; few years later it will be 15-15-15-15; it will keep go on shifting forward. It takes about 40 years to change Sankranti pattern. . So, the pattern will change to 14-15-15-15 in the period 2049-2052 and thereafter Sankranthi will fall only on Jan 15th up to the beginning of next century. But if we examine the calendar of 2101 to 2104,we observe Makara sankranthi falls on Jan 16th on all 4 years though 40 year period is not yet over.Why? 1969 – 1972 14-14-14-15 2009 – 2012 14-14-15-15 2049 – 2052 14-15-15-15 2089 – 2092 15-15-15-15 2101 – 2104 16-16-16-16 2125 – 2128 16-16-16-17 2100 is not a leap year! It is going to be an ordinary year of 365 days. So, Sankranti won’t get pulled backward the way it gets due to a leap year . It will move ahead by a day forever. As per the rules of Gregorian calendar that we use, if a year is fully divisible by 100 it has to be fully divisible by 400 in order to be a leap year. So the years 2100, 2200, 2300 are not leap years; but 2000, 2400 are, so Sankranti will get pulled back in those years. This proves that Sankranti will keep going out of sync with seasons.It will go into February in another 1200 years. No wonder if Sankranthi comes after Ratha Sapthami. Is it not interesting to observe connection between leap year and Sankranthi? Jayasala 42
