In my opinion we should celebrate Maharaj’s birth as per Tithi and this is my personal opinion. Please don’t make my personal opinion a point of contention now. If you agree with my opinion, take it, if not, leave it. But please don’t argue about it for our Maharaj’s sake.
The reason I express this opinion is that we are Marathi and our year should follow the Marathi calendar. I am of this opinion. Hey, if the British hadn’t come to our country, we would have done business like the Marathi calendar, wouldn’t we? So now we should forget our culture to preserve the culture of others? Is this correct? Then what is the use of the importance of the motherland, mother tongue, and our culture as persuaded by Maharaj? I agree that if we want to balance and deal with the world, we have to use the worldly things. We have to celebrate their festivals happily. That too according to their own chronology. But which are our festivals, which is our culture, with which the world has nothing to do, what is the problem to celebrate those festivals, that culture according to our calendar? And so when Maharaj was born, only Marathi calendar was preferred in Swarajya. Maharaj’s birth chart has also been made accordingly. Maharaj’s birth, coronation and all other functions are done according to the Marathi calendar and by looking at the correct dates. So who are we to tie all those rituals to the English calendar? And that’s the calendar that again has a double chronology as mentioned above. That’s why I say once again that we should celebrate our Shivaraya’s birth anniversary on the date according to the Marathi calendar and if we all think about it and accept this opinion, then there will be no need to celebrate Maharaj’s birth anniversary twice. And If not, then after a few years, will Maharaj’s birth anniversary be celebrated three times a year? Now I am afraid of this. Hey, think for yourself, what would Maharaj think? That their own devotees/soldiers/Mawlas are fighting each other over something as trivial as celebrating their birthday. If we are just engaged in fighting with each other on such a thing and if the enemy comes, will we fight with him? I say ‘a trivial thing’ to celebrating a birthday because Maharaj himself did not like celebrating a birthday and also he did not have the time to celebrate the same. They always say, if you want to celebrate, celebrate Swarajya every day and every moment, and what are we doing? Should we think about it? Anyway, instead of getting into a debate about Maharaj’s birthday and birth time, let’s learn more about Maharaj’s immortal deeds and about Maharaj and try to act accordingly by imbibing his thoughts and practices. Let us try to follow the path shown by them. Even if we are able to follow 10% of the path shown by him, Maharaj will be satisfied that his hard work has paid off and we will have a prosperous state, country and world. You may find some of the things I have written in this blog/article a bit exaggerated. But I must say that the work of our king was, is and always will be so great that even that exaggeration pales in comparison to the deeds of our Chhatrapati.
