🇮🇳How does India mark Equinoxes and Solstices?

मकर संक्रांति (Makar Sankranti)

Local date

January 14, 2027

When is it?

The day the sun enters the sidereal sign of Capricorn; because the reckoning is fixed to the stars rather than to the equinox, the date slips later by roughly a day every seventy years.

Makar Sankranti is the day the sun enters Capricorn. A Ministry of Culture release dated 14 January 2025 describes it as marking the sun's turn towards the northern hemisphere — but astronomically that turn happens at the December solstice, on the 21st or 22nd, more than three weeks earlier. The gap comes from the method: Indian reckoning pins the twelve signs to the fixed stars rather than to the equinox point, and the slow wobble of Earth's axis pushes the entry date later by about a day every seventy years, so a festival that once sat on the solstice has drifted into mid-January. The names change by state — Pongal in Tamil Nadu, Magh Bihu in Assam, Uttarayan in Gujarat, where the sky fills with kites. There is no single all-India public holiday for it; each state and each employer works from its own list.