UJJAIN: Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Friday called for replacing Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) with ‘Mahakal Standard Time’ (MST), saying that Ujjain had historically been the world’s centre of time calculation.“Ujjain is the place through which Tropic of Cancer passes, and it is from here that time was calculated for the world in ancient times. The time has now come to logically establish Mahakal Standard Time in place of GMT, ” Pradhan said while speaking at the inaugural session of an international conference, ‘Mahakal: The Master of Time’, in Ujjain on Friday.“Modern AI tools also acknowledge that the original centre of time calculation lies in the region around Ujjain,” he said.Pradhan drew a direct connection between India’s spiritual centres and its scientific heritage. “Ujjain is a place where the distance between spirituality and science disappears,” he said, describing India’s major spiritual centres — Ujjain, Kashi, Kanchi and Puri Dham — as ‘living laboratories’ where science, art, culture, literature and spirituality converge.Pointing to a practice at Mahakal temple as an example, he said that the continuous flow of water from a pot over the deity, beginning on the first day of the Vaishakh month, is not merely a religious tradition but a scientific response to the challenges of summer and a form of environmental management. “This shows that our society has, for centuries, possessed the scientific understanding to align its way of life with time cycles and changes in nature,” he said.He also inaugurated Ujjain Science Centre and launched a science exhibition at the city’s planetarium.Speaking on the occasion, chief minister Mohan Yadav said, “Ujjain has been a global centre for timekeeping and astronomy since ancient times. In Ujjain, timekeeping is not merely religious but also thoroughly scientific, as our ancestors established ages ago through texts like the Surya Siddhanta. Time and space are inextricably linked.”He also said the Indian time measurement system, based on sunrise and sunset that precisely synchronise with the movement of the planets and the Earth’s rotation, is more accurate than GMT.“Due to the intersection of the Tropic of Cancer and the zero longitude, Ujjain has been the global centre for time calculation. The MP govt is committed to developing Ujjain as both a religious city and a science city. For this, a Science Centre, established at a cost of Rs 15 crore, has been inaugurated,” Yadav said.