News Excerpt:

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister claimed that India, specifically Ujjain, set the world’s time some 300 years ago before the Prime Meridian was shifted, first to Paris and then to Greenwich (London).

Since when have humans sought to measure time accurately?

• Ancient Indians recorded dates using the lunar day (tithi) unit, and the solar calendar was known from Gupta times onward.
• Before the Industrial Revolution, the natural rhythms of day and night and the coming and going of seasons served the needs of most people.
• After the Industrial Revolution, better and more accurate clocks began to be produced by the second half of the 18th century.

When did the concept of a national time arise?

• In the early part of the Industrial Age, time remained local. There was no standardisation for it.
• The need for standardisation first arose in the 19th century, as the world became more interconnected due to technological innovations such as railways, steamships, and telegraphs.
• There was no direct leap from local to global time -
• First came national times, seen as a means and symbol of national unification and a way to govern colonial possessions better. 
• 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.
• The respective Prime Meridians of these empires were defined as 0° longitude in their respective maps, and the time of their colonial possessions was determined accordingly.

Prime Meridian as a Global Watch

• The first attempts to settle on a single, globally-recognized prime meridian came in the 1870s, spurred by the need to standardize ship and railway timetables.
• In 1883, a convention of railroad executives met in Chicago and agreed to implement 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.
• They adopted the meridian passing through the center of the transit instrument at the Observatory of Greenwich as the initial meridian for longitude.
• Since any north-south line passing through the two poles could technically be chosen as the Prime Meridian.
• There was significant nationalist opposition to adopting the Greenwich Mean Time. The two World Wars 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.

Basis of the claim about Ujjain:

• Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister referred to Ujjain as the Prime Meridian 300 years ago. 
• However, there wasn’t a Prime Meridian then, at least not in the universally recognized sense it is understood today.
• The earliest postulation of standard time in the Indian context came from the 4th century CE Sanskrit treatise ‘Surya Siddhanta’.
• It described a Prime Meridian passing through 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.