Nearly 7 years ago, World Sikh News ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh met Pal Singh Pure­wal while he was in Delhi en route to Ed­mon­ton, af­ter a brief trip to Pun­jab dur­ing which nei­ther Akal Takht Sahib au­thor­i­ties nor the SGPC thought it wise to dis­cuss with him the pro­posed changes to the Nanakshahi Cal­en­dar.

Pal Singh Pure­wal was not apolo­getic about any­thing, forth­right and clear about every as­pect of the cal­en­dar. Suave, gen­tle Gur­sikh, Pal Singh Pure­wal was de­ter­mi­na­tion per­son­i­fied while talk­ing about the Nanakshahi Cal­en­dar.

WSN: Pal Singh Ji, tell us a lit­tle about your­self?

Pal Singh: I be­long to vil­lage Shankar in Ja­lan­dar dis­trict and I my fa­ther and grand­fa­ther had in­cul­cated love for Sikhi in me at a very early age. I mi­grated to the UK in 1965 and worked my way up the lad­der to the po­si­tion of Se­nior En­gi­neer with Texas In­stru­ments in Bed­ford. I moved to Canada in 1974 along with my fam­ily. Here I changed my pro­fes­sion to com­put­ing, and even­tu­ally be­came man­ager of the Data Pro­cess­ing De­part­ment of a lo­cal com­pany. Now I am re­tired. I gave up work at the age of 54 and spent full time on my pet pro­ject Jantri 500 Years.

WSN: Tell us about your fa­ther and grand­fa­ther?

Pal Singh: My grand­fa­ther Deva Singh, who was a real Gur­mukh, was my great­est in­spi­ra­tion. He was a true Gur­sikh and he in­cul­cated the spirit of en­quiry, the spirit to learn through­out life in me. Sim­i­larly my fa­ther –Har­bans Singh who died a cou­ple of months back at the ripe age of 95, also in­flu­enced me a lot and helped me in my jour­ney of Sikhi.

WSN: What prompted you to make the Nanakshahi Cal­en­dar?

Pal Singh: If you go back on the cal­en­dar that the Sikh na­tion had been us­ing, you will find that it was the Bikrami cal­en­dar for most of the years in his­tory. I thought that it was very nec­es­sary that the Sikh na­tion had its very own cal­en­dar. We also knew that the Bikrami cal­en­dar was not ac­cord­ing to Gur­bani, the months ac­cord­ing to the Bikrami cal­en­dar were slip­ping in sea­sons and we wanted to make a cal­en­dar in which we could fix the months in sea­sons for all times to come. It was also known that the lu­nar part of the Bikrami cal­en­dar was such that the Gur­purabs were shift­ing from year to year and they were go­ing back by 11-10 days next year and the year af­ter and then go for­ward by 19 days  in the sub­se­quent year, mak­ing the pre­dictabil­ity of the Gur­purabs very dif­fi­cult . One had to wait for the Pan­dit’s Jantris to find out the dates of the Gur­purabs.

WSN: What all did you study for stan­dard­iza­tion of the Nanakshahi Cal­en­dar?

Pal Singh: For this work I had to study on my own, an­cient Hindu as­tro­nom­i­cal works like Surya Sid­dhanta, Graha Laghava, and Makrand Sarni, and many more books in­clud­ing books on mod­ern as­tron­omy.

WSN: How much time have you spent on this pro­ject?

Pal Singh: I have spent years and years on the cal­en­dar. Work­ing on this pro­ject was my hobby for the past more than 40 years, off and on. Since my re­tire­ment, it has be­come a pas­sion and con­tin­ues to this day. It took ef­forts of many many years. Be­fore the Nanakshahi cal­en­dar could see the light of the day, a lot prepara­tory work had to be done.

WSN: What kind of prepara­tory work had to be done?

Pal Singh: First, we had to set­tle about the cor­rect dates of the his­tor­i­cal events and for this I had to cal­cu­late and pre­pare a 500 year Jantri, be­gin­ning with 1469 and con­tin­u­ing for 2000 years, which Jantri had com­par­a­tive dates of the Bikrami cal­en­dar,  the Hi­jri cal­en­dar, the Gre­go­rian and Ju­lian cal­en­dar, the Shaka  cal­en­dar. Of course at that time, the Nanakshahi cal­en­dar was the same as the Bikrami cal­en­dar.  This made it eas­ier for us to check the his­tor­i­cal dates. This took many years of cal­cu­la­tion and prepa­ra­tion. It also in­volved the study of Hindu Granths like Surya Sid­hant, which I mas­tered as it was nec­es­sary for the cal­cu­la­tion of 500 year Jantri.

WSN: Was there any other fac­tor which con­tributed to the mak­ing of the cal­en­dar?

Pal Singh: The tragic events of 1984 af­fected every Sikh’s psy­che and I was also deeply moved and I re­dou­bled my ef­forts so that the Sikh na­tion has its own cal­en­dar.

WSN: What do you think is the ba­sis of the pre­sent ef­forts of the Jathedar Akal Takht Sahib and other Jathedars to in­cor­po­rate cer­tain older as­pects into the Nanakshahi cal­en­dar?

Pal Singh: I think the whole thing is mo­ti­vated by po­lit­i­cal pres­sures and I want to say that the Nanakshahi cal­en­dar should not be bartered for dera votes. The cal­en­dar is ac­cu­rate, it has been tried for seven years, its ac­cept­abil­ity is more than 95 per­cent from Nor­way to New Zealand, from Hong Kong to In­dia, to Mid­dle-east, Eu­rope, USA and Canada. The Sikh Panth has whole-heart­edly ac­cepted it and greeted it with great joy, as the Sikhs have their own cal­en­dar.

WSN: What are the prob­lems that are be­ing talked about?

Pal Singh: There are no prob­lems. What they are try­ing to do is to go back to the San­grands of the Bikrami cal­en­dar, which will end the iden­tity of the Nanakshahi cal­en­dar.

WSN: You have of­ten said that the Nanakshahi cal­en­dar has Gur­bani as its base, can you dwell on this a lit­tle more?

Pal Singh: Yes, there are three Ba­nis which give us some di­rec­tion to­wards cal­en­dar sci­ence, Baramaha of Guru Ar­jan Sahib in Maajh Raag, Baramah of Guru Nanak Sahib in Raag Tukhari and Ruti Slok of Guru Ar­jan Sahib in Raag Ramkali. These ba­nis men­tion the months and the sea­sons of these months.  We have to en­sure that the cal­en­dar is such that the sea­sons stay in those months for all times to come, as per Gur­bani. Sec­ondly, in the month of Asar in Baramaha Tukhari, there is a line from Guru Nanak Sahib which reads,

The process of “Rath phi­ran”, the turn­ing of the char­iot of the sun is in June when the length of the day is the great­est, and when the sun comes back from its max­i­mum dec­li­na­tion and starts on its south­ward jour­ney –that is called the turn­ing of the sun or the turn­ing of the char­iot of the sun –”rath phi­ran”. The mo­ment the rath turns, and the mo­ment the rath turns in the next year, it is called the trop­i­cal year –that is the length of the trop­i­cal year and this is an ac­cepted fact all over the world by all as­tronomers.

WSN: How can this pre­sent move to un­der­mine the Nanakshahi cal­en­dar be stopped? Those who want to dis­tract Sikhs away from this, say that apart from San­grands, there is prob­lem of other dates too? As I was also a mem­ber of the com­mit­tee formed by Akal Takht Sahib for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Nanakshahi cal­en­dar, I be­lieve that you in your ini­tial draft had solved those prob­lems, Can you tell us more?

Pal Singh: Ab­solutely, there is no prob­lem with dates. All the dates given in the Nanakshahi cal­en­dar are ac­cu­rate and cor­rect. They have not read the in­tro­duc­tion to the cal­en­dar, which is pub­lished by the SGPC in the ini­tial pages of the Nanakshahi cal­en­dar every year. In the in­tro­duc­tion it is men­tioned that we have not ac­cepted the Eng­lish dates, we have not ac­cepted the tithi-sudi dates, and we have ac­cepted the dates ac­cord­ing to the so­lar cal­en­dar. For ex­am­ple, the mar­tyr­dom day of Guru Ar­jan Sahib ac­cord­ing to the Eng­lish cal­en­dar was 30 May 1606 and ac­cord­ing to the Bikrami cal­en­dar, which is a lu­nar cal­en­dar, it was Jeth Sudi 4. We have not ac­cepted any of these, we have ac­cepted the so­lar date of that cal­en­dar which was 2 Harr, and if you look into the Nanashahi cal­en­dar, you will find 2 Harr as the Sha­heedi Day of Guru Ar­jan Sahib Ji. So the date is cor­rect. Sim­i­larly, 23 Poh is the date of Parkash of Guru Gob­ind Singh Ji and we have used that date. 11 Maghar is the mar­tyr­dom day of Guru Tegh Ba­hadur Sahib and we have used that. We did not care whether 11 Maghar comes on 24 No­vem­ber, 2 Harr comes on 6 June or 23 Poh comes on 5 Jan­u­ary be­cause we have not used the Eng­lish dates.

WSN: What is your ap­peal to the Jathedars and the dera peo­ple who want to tam­per with the cal­en­dar?

Pal Singh: Go with the opin­ion of the Panth. Awaaz–e-Kha­lak ko Naqara eh Khuda samjho–Con­sider the voice of the Peo­ple as the voice of God.

WSN: What is your mes­sage to the next gen­er­a­tion in terms of keep­ing the spirit of Nanakshahi cal­en­dar alive?

Pal Singh: I think they should study the Nanakshahi cal­en­dar, then have faith in it af­ter study­ing it and then make sure that they fol­low it.