Namaz Times in Kolkata, India Today

The one city on this list where the sun runs ahead of the clock

Kolkata lies near 22.57 degrees north and 88.36 degrees east. Indian Standard Time is drawn from the meridian at 82.5 degrees east, which crosses the country through eastern Uttar Pradesh, and Kolkata sits almost six degrees to the east of it. A degree of longitude is worth four minutes of solar time, so the sun reaches its highest point over this city roughly twenty-three minutes before the clock says noon.

That makes Kolkata the exception among the Indian cities on this site. Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad and the rest all wait for the sun after the clock has already passed twelve. Here it arrives first. Dhuhr is early against the clock, Maghrib is early, and through December the sunset adhan goes out earlier by the clock in this city than almost anywhere else in the country.

The city kept its own standard until 1948

This is not a modern curiosity. Calcutta held on to a separate local standard, some twenty-three minutes ahead of Indian Standard Time, for more than four decades after IST was adopted in 1906, and only gave it up in 1948. The gap that old clock preserved is exactly the gap this page is describing: the distance between the sun over Bengal and a national clock set several hundred kilometres to the west. The clock was eventually changed. The sky was not.

Just over an hour between here and Gujarat

Set Kolkata against Ahmedabad, at 72.57 degrees east, and the spread is close to sixteen degrees of longitude — about sixty-three minutes of sun. Maghrib here is finished and Isha approaching while Ahmedabad is still waiting to break its roza, on the same national clock, on the same day. Mumbai is separated by a similar amount, Delhi by about forty-five minutes, and Lucknow, much nearer, by around half an hour.

These gaps do not move with the season and do not depend on which calculation method is used. They are purely a matter of where the sun is. A timetable carried here from Delhi or Mumbai is not approximately right; it is three quarters of an hour or more out at both ends of the fasting day.

Asr, and the shadow rule behind it

Asr is the only prayer in the table where the disagreement is legal rather than astronomical, and it is what most people are actually looking for when they search namaz time for an Indian city. Both positions measure from the same starting point: the shadow an object casts at solar noon, which at this latitude is never nothing.

• The Hanafi position holds that Asr enters once the shadow has grown by twice the object's own length beyond that noon shadow.
• The Shafi'i, Maliki and Hanbali position sets the threshold at one length beyond it.

The Hanafi time is always the later of the two, in practice by something between forty minutes and an hour, and the gap widens in winter when the noon sun sits low. This page publishes the Hanafi threshold, which is what the great majority of Kolkata's mosques follow. If your masjid works to the Shafi'i position, take Asr from there — it is a difference of school, not an error in either table.

Which angles produce Fajr and Isha

Dawn and nightfall leave no shadow to measure. They are fixed by how far the sun has sunk below the horizon, and that figure is a scholarly convention rather than a direct observation. This page uses the University of Islamic Sciences, Karachi parameters — eighteen degrees at dawn and eighteen at night — the standard in general use across India and the wider subcontinent. The reasoning is set out on the India prayer times hub.

When a phone disagrees with the mosque down the road, check the method first: an app left on a Gulf or Muslim World League default is working from different angles and will drift. Whatever difference survives that is usually iqama practice — the interval each congregation leaves between the adhan and standing for prayer, decided locally and no part of any calculation.

Sehri and iftar at the eastern edge

Fajr closes sehri and Maghrib opens iftar. Sunrise appears in the table but marks neither boundary; its only role is to close the window in which Fajr can still be prayed. With an eighteen-degree dawn angle there is a substantial interval between the two, so treating sunrise as the end of the pre-dawn meal is a large mistake rather than a small one.

Kolkata's eastern position shifts the whole fasting day earlier on the clock than it falls for relatives in Delhi or Mumbai — earlier sehri, earlier iftar, an identical length of fast. Because Isha is set by a twilight angle rather than a fixed number of minutes after sunset, the space between iftar and taraweeh moves through the month; the monthly Kolkata table shows that drift rather than a single day's figures.

Friday in the older congregations

Jumu'ah stands in place of Dhuhr for those attending, and the call follows the Dhuhr entry above. The older jami' masjids, Nakhoda Masjid among them, fill well before the khutbah begins, and when the imam starts and how long he speaks are his to decide. Allow for the journey and the crowd rather than for the listed time alone. Anyone praying at home prays Dhuhr in the ordinary way.

Direction of prayer, and where to look next

Work out the direction with the Qibla direction tool from your own position rather than borrowing a bearing quoted for another city. From India it runs broadly westward, but the precise line shifts across the country, and a phone compass indoors is easily deflected by steel framing and reinforced concrete. Ramzan and Eid dates are on the Hijri calendar. The nearest comparison on this site is Lucknow prayer times; the opposite extreme is Ahmedabad prayer times.