Gandhi’s Dream That Religion Killed (And How We Finally Fix It)

Connecting the Dots

The Calendar That Almost Was — And the One That Still Could Be

I used to wonder why India sticks with the Saka Calendar when it offers so few practical advantages. Why not just adopt a true perennial calendar — a 364-day year perfectly divisible by 7, with every date landing on the same weekday forever?

Then I discovered that India almost did exactly that — 75 years ago.

In 1953, five years after Gandhi’s assassination (and the birth of Israel in the very same year), India formally submitted a proposal to the United Nations to adopt The World Calendar. Gandhi himself had dreamed of it:

“I am for a uniform calendar for the whole world, just as I am for a uniform coinage for all countries, and a supplementary artificial language like Esperanto for all peoples.”

Fourteen governments officially supported or gave favorable responses:

• Afghanistan
• Brazil
• Chile
• China (Republic of)
• Ecuador
• Greece
• India
• Mexico
• Panama
• Peru
• Saudi Arabia
• Spain
• Turkey
• Uruguay
• Yugoslavia

So what killed it?

Religion.

The World Calendar inserted “blank days” outside the weekly cycle. That broke the uninterrupted 7-day week sacred to Jews, Christians, Muslims, and hundreds of millions of Asians. India withdrew support once the implications became clear. The United States abandoned it after unified opposition from every major Jewish organization and broad Christian and Muslim backlash.

Elisabeth Achelis refused to compromise. She wanted her exact design or nothing.

She got nothing.

Fast-forward seven decades.

The religious objection that once doomed calendar reform is gone — if we choose a calendar that keeps the 7-day week intact.

That calendar exists.

I call it the Global Perennial Calendar (GPC) — 364 days, exactly 52 weeks, every year identical, no blank days, no disruption of the weekly cycle whatsoever.

It is the only proposal that fully respects the Sabbath, Sunday, Jumu’ah, and every traditional lunar-solar observance while delivering all the practical advantages the world has wanted for a century.

The planet will never be atheist. We don’t need it to be.

We just need a calendar that stops pretending religion doesn’t exist — and stops breaking what billions hold sacred.

Gandhi’s dream of one calendar for humanity is still alive.

It’s just waiting for us to be wiser than we were in 1953.

— A vision worth reviving