The birth of Vivekananda at 6.33 a.m., just six minutes before sunrise, on 12 January 1863, which was the 7-th day of the dark fortnight of the lunar month and   auspicious because it was the day of Makara Sankranti, marked, as it were, a new sunrise in the history of India. He was born in the Simla locality of Kolkata, as the eldest son of Bishwanath Datta and Bhubaneswari Devi.