Jesus, Vajpayee and Good Governance Day

Unabashedly copying Ayn Rand’s opening line, “Who is John Galt”…  

Who was Jesus?

No, I am not going into the theological aspects of it. My question is from the point of view of history, whatever we can reasonably construct about this person. He was a person who rose up against the power structure (centered on the priestly class) then obtained in that small region of the world. That is, in a sense he (Note: not ‘He’) was promoting good governance. Then, marking the supposed day of his birth as Good Governance Day in India should not rile the followers of the religion that sprang up in his wake. I fail to understand why it has.

Who is Atal Bihari Vajpayee?

He is a ninety year old who has adorned the chair of Prime Minister of India, with distinction as many would assert. His governance also gets a number of brownie points. Let us not argue on these. He is also marked as having been born on December 25^th in the year 1924, following Jesus by that many number of years; isn’t that why we are celebrating his birthday on this date? You would answer yes, of course. Well, I do not accept that.

Why would I not agree on Vajpayee’s date of birth? I do. I agree his date of birth is December 25, 1924. My difference lies in how we reckon the day he was born in subsequent years. On the day he was born, the sun, the moon, the signs of the Zodiac and the stars held certain positions as seen from the earth which are repeated annually on a particular day. It is on this day, every year, Vajpayee’s birthday needs to be celebrated, if we have any pride in our calendrical system.

By the way, in many TamBrahm families this tradition still holds and children enjoy birthdays twice a year!

Vajpayee is proud to have been mentored by a Hindu cultural organization (read: RSS). Now, it surprises me that this organization, so derisive of western ideas and traditions, has not cottoned on to this inconsistency in its celebrations. Someone needs to bring to its attention that, indeed, only every 19 years does December 25^th-that is, when Vajpayee was 19, 38, 57, 76 years old-fell in line with the positions that the astronomical bodies held (as observed from the earth) their relative positions as they did on the day of his birth. On his 90^th birth anniversary, sorry, the dates do not match.

How do I know? As regards the days, the astronomy based calendar of ours agrees with the merely arithmetical calendar as being followed in the west only once in 19 years. We, of course, hold our systems as superior to everything else in the world, don’t we?

Our calendrical system, therefore, should the hold the place of pride in our mind. We must celebrate Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s birthday on the exact day it occurs every year, as per our, the Hindu calendar. We do have the astrologers (I deliberately avoided using the term astronomers) who can tell us when that is each year, don’t we?

What is in it for the government, changing the Good Governance Day annually? Nothing. In fact, it will be much beneficial to its agenda. Even Indian Christians will acknowledge the revised Good Governance Day. Conversions may become not so onerous for that community. In fact, treating Vajpayee and Jesus (Not Christ) as equals in the non-religious sphere may even be more than palatable for them as Jesus is being credited for something more than the religion he did not establish! (It was indeed Saul after converting to Paul who did this.)

If we follow the advice above, the so-called controversy, which Christians felt was downgrading the importance of the day from the perspective of their religion will be a fact only once every 19 years and they indeed should be able to live with that.

As the so-called controversy is about to die a natural death, I thought I will resurrect it with this piece. After all, Jesus became Christ only upon resurrection. That comes on Easter Sunday, a day that does not have a western calendrical date!

That is the day on which we are supposed to realize who Jesus was!

Raghuram Ekambaram