Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC")) is not returning UTC time

Question

The System.out.println(cal_Two.getTime()) invocation returns a Date from getTime(). It is the Date which is getting converted to a string for println, and that conversion will use the default IST timezone in your case.

You'll need to explicitly use DateFormat.setTimeZone() to print the Date in the desired timezone.

EDIT: Courtesy of @Laurynas, consider this:

TimeZone timeZone = TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC");
Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance(timeZone);
SimpleDateFormat simpleDateFormat = 
       new SimpleDateFormat("EE MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzz yyyy", Locale.US);
simpleDateFormat.setTimeZone(timeZone);

System.out.println("Time zone: " + timeZone.getID());
System.out.println("default time zone: " + TimeZone.getDefault().getID());
System.out.println();

System.out.println("UTC:     " + simpleDateFormat.format(calendar.getTime()));
System.out.println("Default: " + calendar.getTime());

java.util.Date is independent of the timezone. When you print cal_Two though the Calendar instance has got its timezone set to UTC, cal_Two.getTime() would return a Date instance which does not have a timezone (and is always in the default timezone)

Calendar cal_Two = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));
System.out.println(cal_Two.getTime());
System.out.println(cal_Two.getTimeZone());

Output:

 Sat Jan 25 16:40:28 IST 2014
    sun.util.calendar.ZoneInfo[id="UTC",offset=0,dstSavings=0,useDaylight=false,transitions=0,lastRule=null] 

From the javadoc of TimeZone.setDefault()

Sets the TimeZone that is returned by the getDefault method. If zone is null, reset the default to the value it had originally when the VM first started.

Hence, moving your setDefault() before cal_Two is instantiated you would get the correct result.

TimeZone.setDefault(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));
Calendar cal_Two = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));
System.out.println(cal_Two.getTime());

Calendar cal_Three = Calendar.getInstance();
System.out.println(cal_Three.getTime());

Output:

Sat Jan 25 11:15:29 UTC 2014
Sat Jan 25 11:15:29 UTC 2014

You are definitely missing a small thing and that is you are not setting a default value:

TimeZone.setDefault(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));

So the code would look like:

TimeZone.setDefault(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));
Calendar cal_Two = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));
System.out.println(cal_Two.getTime());

Explanation: If you want to change the time zone, set the default time zone using TimeZone.setDefault()

Calendar currentTime = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));
currentTime.set(Calendar.ZONE_OFFSET, TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC").getRawOffset());
Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance();
calendar.set(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY, currentTime.get(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY));
calendar.getTimeInMillis()

is working for me