Famous people born in Krittika nakshatra, checked against the Moon

Among widely known Indians, the strongest cases for a Krittika birth are Anil Kumble, born 17 October 1970, Homi Bhabha, born 30 October 1909, Uday Kotak, born 15 March 1959, and Sushmita Sen, born 19 November 1975. On each of those dates the Moon spent most or nearly all of the day inside Krittika. The rest of this page shows how that was checked, what Krittika is, and why the same names turn up on three different nakshatra lists elsewhere.

What is being claimed, and how it was tested

Being "born under" a nakshatra means the Moon stood in that nakshatra at the moment of birth. Not the Sun. The Moon moves fast, crossing a whole nakshatra in slightly under twenty five hours, so on nearly every date it leaves one nakshatra and enters the next at some hour. A date alone gives you two candidates. Only a birth time picks one.

For every name below, the Moon's position has been computed for the published date of birth, and the article tells you how much of that day the Moon actually spent in Krittika. Where the answer depends on the hour, you are told the hour instead of being handed a confident sentence.

The reckoning behind those hours, stated once so you can repeat the work or disagree with it: Lahiri ayanamsa, which is the standard sidereal reckoning in India and the one the official calendar follows, computed on the Swiss Ephemeris, hours in Indian Standard Time. A different sidereal reckoning, Raman's for example, moves these boundaries by roughly two to three hours, which is enough to change a late evening case. Anyone quoting an hour without saying which reckoning produced it is asking you to trust an arithmetic you cannot check.

Krittika, in plain terms

Krittika is the third nakshatra. It is the one you can go outside and look at: it corresponds to the small tight cluster of stars in the night sky that Europe calls the Pleiades and India has always called the Krittikas, the six who nursed the war god Kartikeya.

It straddles a rashi boundary, as nine of the twenty seven nakshatras do, a full third of them. Its first quarter lies in Aries and the remaining three lie in Taurus, so two people both born in Krittika can have quite different charts depending on which side of that line they fall. Its lord is the Sun. Its deity is Agni, fire, and the symbol usually given is a blade or a flame.

The character sketch tradition attaches to Krittika follows from Agni. Fire cooks, and fire burns, and both are the same property. Texts read Krittika as sharpness: clarity, the ability to cut through a muddle to the thing that matters, directness that other people sometimes experience as bluntness, a strong sense of what is right, and appetite. They also read a difficulty in it, which is that a person who can see through things quickly may be short with those who cannot, and that the same heat that gets work done can burn the person carrying it.

That is what the tradition holds. It is a description of a position, not a prediction about a life, and it sits alongside eight other planets and twelve houses in any real chart.

The checked list

Anil Kumble, born 17 October 1970. The Moon entered Krittika a little after two in the morning and stayed all day. Effectively settled.

Homi Bhabha, born 30 October 1909. The Moon entered Krittika in the small hours and remained there through the day. Effectively settled.

Uday Kotak, born 15 March 1959. Krittika from midnight until late that night. Only a birth in the last hour or so gives a different answer.

Sushmita Sen, born 19 November 1975. Krittika until about half past six in the evening, then Rohini. A daytime birth gives Krittika. Worth noting because Sushmita Sen appears on Mula nakshatra lists all over the internet, and Mula was nowhere near the Moon that day.

N. R. Narayana Murthy, born 20 August 1946. Krittika until about six in the evening.

Vicky Kaushal, born 16 May 1988. Krittika until about half past six in the evening.

V. V. S. Laxman, born 1 November 1974. The Moon entered Krittika at about a quarter past six in the morning and stayed. Likely for any birth after breakfast.

Tabu, born 4 November 1971. Krittika until about half past four in the afternoon.

Amartya Sen, born 3 November 1933. The Moon entered Krittika at about nine in the morning and stayed.

Dharmendra, born 8 December 1935. The Moon entered Krittika at about half past nine in the morning and stayed.

Every one of these rests on a date that is a matter of public record and on a computation you could repeat. None of them rests on a published birth time, because published birth times for famous people are usually recollection or publicity rather than a document.

The one case where a document exists, and it still does not settle it

There is a well known instance of a public figure whose birth certificate actually states a time: an American politician born in Honolulu on 4 August 1961, whose long form certificate was released publicly. Even there the Moon left Krittika within a few minutes of the time on the certificate. A margin of minutes is smaller than the accuracy of most birth records, which is the whole lesson in one example. When a nakshatra is decided by minutes, the honest answer is that it is undecided.

This is also why the same actor appears under three nakshatras on three sites. Usually the birth time is unknown. Sometimes the birth date itself is disputed. And sometimes the calculator was set to the western tropical zodiac rather than the sidereal zodiac Indian astrology uses, which shifts the answer by roughly a whole sign.

Finding out whether Krittika is yours

You need date, time and place of birth. If your time comes from a hospital slip or a municipal record, the answer will be firm. If it comes from family memory, it will usually still be right, and where it is not you will be able to see that, because the result will sit close to a nakshatra change.

A free kundli on this site at /new will give you the nakshatra and its quarter, along with which of the two rashis your Krittika falls in, which for this nakshatra genuinely matters. If you want the chart read rather than just computed, that is what a reading is. The same checking applied to another popular list is in famous people born in Swati nakshatra.

Questions people actually ask

Is Krittika an aggressive nakshatra?

Tradition reads it as sharp rather than aggressive, and the distinction is worth keeping. The image is a blade or a flame, both of which are tools before they are weapons. Where it shows up as harshness in a life, that is usually one part of a chart and not the nakshatra deciding a temperament by itself.

Does it matter whether my Krittika is in Aries or Taurus?

Yes, more than for most nakshatras. The first quarter of Krittika sits in Aries and the other three in Taurus, and the rashi changes what the Moon is doing. Here the quarter is not a fine detail, it decides your Moon sign, so it is worth having a birth time good enough to fix it.

Why do celebrity nakshatra lists disagree with each other?

Because most of them are built from dates alone and copied from one another. The Moon changes nakshatra on nearly every date, so a date without a time supports two answers, and different writers pick different ones. When you check your own chart, use date, time and place together, and make sure the calculation is sidereal.