Madhya Pradesh CM’s claim about Ujjain and the Prime Meridian: a short history of measuring time

Is there any basis to Yadav’s claims? We take a look.

Since when have humans sought to accurately measure time?

Humans have always had a sense of time and its passage. Ancient Indians recorded dates using the unit of the lunar day (tithi), and the solar calendar was known from Gupta times onward. Astrological and mathematical calculations required fairly accurate measurements; there was, however, no way for common people to precisely measure time in a day-to-day sense.

Until the Industrial Revolution, which started in Britain in the 18th century and spread to the European continent, the economy remained overwhelmingly agricultural, and the natural rhythms of day and night, and the coming and going of seasons, largely served the needs of most people.

The Industrial Revolution changed things in two ways. First, better and more accurate clocks began to be produced by the second half of the 18th century. More importantly, with the advent of the modern factory, it became important not only to keep time, but to also make the most of it.

“It is clear that between 1780 and 1830, important changes took place. The average English working man became more disciplined, more subject to the productive tempo of “the clock”, more reserved and methodical,” historian E P Thompson wrote in his classic The Making of the English Working Class (1963).

So when did the concept of a national time arise?

In the early part of the Industrial Age, time remained essentially local. Each factory, and each town with a clock tower, set its own time. There was no standardisation, nor was there any need for it.

The need for standardisation first arose in the 19th century, as the world became more interconnected due to the spread of technological innovations such as railways, steamships, and telegraph.

“Universal and uniform time, hailed as a lubricant for a highly interconnected world, was to permit the seamless flow of people, goods, and ideas,” Vanessa Ogle wrote in The Global History of Time (1870-1950). “Like uniform weights and measures based on the decimal system…uniform time would establish commensurability and comparability and allow for commodification and exchange,” she wrote.

There was, however, no direct leap from local to global time. First came national times, seen as a means and symbol of national unification, as well as a way to better govern colonial possessions. The British Empire, for instance, saw standardised time as a tool to synchronise its vast overseas possessions, ease the spread of information and transportation, and help maintain control.

Thus, there came to be national prime meridians — reference points to determine time worldwide, but differing from country to country. So France had the Paris Meridian, Germany the Berlin Meridian, Denmark the Copenhagen Meridian, and the British, the Greenwich Meridian. These respective Prime Meridians of these empired were defined as 0° longitude in their respective maps, and their colonial possessions’ time was determined accordingly.

When and how did the move from national to global time take place?

The first attempts to settle on a single, globally-recognised prime meridian came in the 1870s, spurred by the need to standardise ship and railway timetables.

In 1883, a convention of railroad executives met in Chicago and agreed to the implementation of five time zones in North America, using the Greenwich Mean Time as the basis. The following year, representatives from 26 countries met in Washington DC at the International Meridian Conference, and agreed on the need to “adopt a single prime meridian for all nations, in place of the multiplicity of initial meridians which now exist”.

Where the countries differed was which meridian should be adopted. Since any north-south line passing through the two poles could technically be chosen as the Prime Meridian, the final decision reflected the geopolitical realities of the time — and Britain, the pre-eminent power, came out on top.

The Conference adopted “the meridian passing through the centre of the transit instrument at the Observatory of Greenwich as the initial meridian for longitude”.

But this did not mean that adoption was immediate and universal. Ogle points out that in India, there was significant nationalist opposition to adopting the Greenwich Mean Time. Two globalising events — the two World Wars — would eventually lead to the standardised system we follow today.

In 1983, the IERS Reference Meridian was adopted, which lay 102 m from the old Greenwich Meridian.

What is the basis of the claim about Ujjain?

The Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister has referred to Ujjain being the Prime Meridian 300 years ago. However, there wasn’t a Prime Meridian at that time, at least not in the universally recognised sense that it is understood today.

However, the staggering achievements of Ancient Indian astronomy and mathematics do provide a kernel of truth to Yadav’s claims. The earliest postulation of standard time in the Indian context came from the 4th century CE Sanskrit treatise Surya Siddhanta. An incredible astronomical work for its time, rivalling Ptolemy’s Geographia from a few centuries earlier, it described a Prime Meridian passing through the cities of Rohitaka (modern-day Rohtak) and Avanti (modern-day Ujjain).

Thus, in Indian astronomical traditions, Ujjain has always occupied a central position, with some modern scholars calling it India’s Greenwich (although Indian Standard Time is mentioned with respect to the observatory in Mirzapur).

In 1719, Sawai Raja Jai Singh of Jaipur built a famous observatory in the city, one of the five he built during his reign.