Jayant Navrange

Posted on Jul 16

Build Apps with Indian Holidays & Festivals — Using JSON from calendar-bharat

#json #api #javascript #webdev

📅 How I Built calendar-bharat: An Open Indian Calendar in JSON Format

It all began with a simple frustration:

Every year, I found myself hunting down reliable sources for Indian festival dates, government holidays, and culturally significant days like National Youth Day etc. for my android app. There was no good resource out there, so I made one myself

I thought to myself, "Why isn’t this data easily available as a JSON file?"

That’s when the idea for calendar-bharat was born.

🌟 The Vision

calendar-bharat is my humble attempt to make Indian calendar data—across religions, languages, and regions—accessible to everyone, especially developers.

What if you could just fetch https://jayantur13.github.io/calendar-bharat/calendar/2025.json and have everything you need?

🔍 What You’ll Find Inside

Whether you’re building a desktop app, a mobile widget, or a CLI tool, the JSON file gives you:

✅ Government holidays
🎉 All major festivals (marked with "type": "Festival")
📌 Noteworthy days like National Youth Day, Engineer's Day, and more
🔄 Year-wise JSON files (2024, 2025… 2030)

All served via a simple GitHub Pages site, because distribution should be easy.

👉 Try it: calendar-bharat website
👉 JSON Direct Link: 2025 Calendar

🔧 How to Use It?

That’s the best part. It’s just a plain JSON file.

Use it in your JavaScript frontend to show upcoming festivals
Pull it into your Python script to generate monthly reminders
Make a Telegram or WhatsApp bot (why not?)

Basically, "You know it, right?" — use any language or platform you like.

🛠️ Made with Simplicity in Mind

The structure is clean, easy to parse, and meant to be future-proof.

Example:

json{
  "2025": {
    "January 2025": {
      "January 1, 2025, Monday": {
        "event": "English New Year",
        "type": "Religional Festival",
        "extras": "first day of Gregorian calendar"
      },
      "January 12, 2025, Friday": {
        "event": "National Youth Day",
        "type": "Good to know",
        "extras": "fixed day in Gregorian calendar"
      }
}
}
}

🧑‍💻 Open Source, Always

I truly believe in the power of community. So, if you:

Want to add support for other regional calendars (Gujarati, Tamil, Odia, etc.)
Spot an error or missing date
Wish to add historical years

→ Open an issue or submit a PR.
Every contribution counts. 🙏

Check out the contributing guidelines before you start.

⚠️ A Note of Caution

While I’ve tried my best to keep the data accurate,

I will not be held responsible for any inaccuracy or wrong data.
So always cross-check before using it for official or critical applications.

💖 Show Some Love
If this project helps you or sparks ideas, consider:

⭐ Giving it a star on GitHub
☕ Donating (any amount helps!)
📬 Opening an issue for a calendar you'd like to see next

🏷️ License
Released under CC BY-SA 4.0 —
meaning you're free to use and remix it, as long as you give credit and share alike.

📚 हिंदी में पढ़ना चाहते हैं?
Click Hindi README for the full guide in Hindi.

Thanks for reading! Let’s build tools that celebrate the diversity of Bharat, one JSON file at a time. 🇮🇳

👉 calendar-bharat on GitHub

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