Diwali

• 1. Introduction

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  Diwali is the Hindu festival of lights, and on the eve of the festival in October 2025, a celebration in Ayodhya broke a Guinness World Record with 2,617,615 oil lamps lit at once. That image of millions of small flames captures what the festival means to its celebrants. It marks the spiritual victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance. The festival falls during the Hindu lunisolar months of Ashvin and Kartika, somewhere between mid-October and mid-November, and the celebrations generally last five or six days. But Diwali is not a single story. It belongs to Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, and the Newar Buddhists of Nepal, and each faith attaches different events to the same lights. Why does one festival carry so many meanings? Whose return, whose release, and whose final liberation do those lamps remember? And how did a fusion of ancient harvest festivals come to be inscribed on UNESCO's List of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

• 2. Many Gods, One Light

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  Rama returning to his kingdom in Ayodhya is one of the most widely told Diwali stories. He came home with his wife Sita and his brother Lakshmana after defeating the demon king Ravana, and the festival reminds followers of Hinduism to keep their dharma in daily life. According to the Ramayana, Diwali was celebrated for only two years in Ayodhya. Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity, anchors much of the festival across India. According to Pintchman, some contemporary sources say the five-day festival begins on the day Lakshmi was born from Samudra Manthana, the churning of the cosmic ocean of milk by the Devas and the Asuras. The night of Diwali is when Lakshmi chose and wed Vishnu. Alongside her, Hindus remember Ganesha, the elephant-headed son of Parvati and Shiva, as the remover of obstacles. Krishna gives the festival a different shape in several regions. As an avatar of Vishnu in the Dvapara Yuga period, he killed the demon Narakasura, the evil king of Pragjyotishapura near present-day Assam, and released 16,000 girls held captive. The day before Diwali is remembered as Naraka Chaturdashi, the day Narakasura was killed. Hindus of eastern India turn instead to Kali, the goddess who symbolises the victory of good over evil. Trade and merchant families add their own focus, offering prayers to Saraswati, who embodies music, literature and learning, and to Kubera, who symbolises book-keeping and wealth management. According to Lindsey Harlan, a scholar of Religious Studies, these varied tales all share a focus on righteousness, self-inquiry, and knowledge as the path to overcoming the darkness of ignorance.

• 3. Beyond Hinduism

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  Mahavira's final nirvana is what Jains observe at Diwali, honouring the physical death of the 24th Tirthankar of the current time cycle. Nirvana here is the state of a soul that escapes the cycle of birth and death and experiences boundless bliss and infinite knowledge. Jain tradition holds that lamp-lighting first began on the day of Mahavira's nirvana in 527 BCE. Eighteen kings who had gathered for his final teachings issued a proclamation that lamps be lit in remembrance of the great light, Mahavira. Bandi Chhor Divas is the Sikh observance, marking the release of Guru Hargobind from the Gwalior Fort prison by the Mughal emperor Jahangir, and his arrival at the Golden Temple in Amritsar. According to J.S. Grewal, a scholar of Sikh history, Diwali in the Sikh tradition is older than the Guru Hargobind legend. Guru Amar Das, the third Guru, built a well in Goindwal with eighty-four steps and invited Sikhs to bathe in its waters on Baisakhi and Diwali as a form of community bonding. According to Ray Colledge, the festival highlights three events in Sikh history: the founding of Amritsar in 1577, the release of Guru Hargobind, and the martyrdom of Bhai Mani Singh in 1738. Bhai Mani Singh died after failing to pay a fine for trying to celebrate Diwali and then refusing to convert to Islam. The Newar people of Nepal are the rare Buddhists who keep the festival, offering prayers to Lakshmi and revering deities in Vajrayana Buddhism. Some observers see this not as syncretism but as the freedom within Mahayana tradition to worship any deity for worldly betterment.

• 4. Five Days Of Ritual

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  Dhanteras opens the festival in most of India, taking its name from dhan, meaning wealth, and teras, meaning thirteenth. Families clean their homes and business premises, install diyas near Lakshmi and Ganesha iconography, and treat it as a major shopping day for new utensils, gold jewellery, and firecrackers. According to Tracy Pintchman, Dhanteras is a symbol of annual renewal and an auspicious beginning for the next year. The term dhan also alludes to Dhanvantari, the Ayurvedic god of health and healing, believed to have emerged from the churning of the cosmic ocean on the same day as Lakshmi. Naraka Chaturdashi, the second day, is also called Chhoti Diwali, where chhoti means little. Marathi Hindus and South Indian Hindus traditionally receive an oil massage from family elders and take a ritual bath before sunrise. In Gujarat especially, Hanuman Puja is performed on this day, since it is believed that spirits roam on the night of Kali Chaudas and Hanuman is worshipped for protection. The third day is the height of the festival, falling on the darkest night of Ashvin or Kartika. At dusk family members gather for the Lakshmi Pujan, then carry the puja lamps outside to light rows of earthenware lamps along the parapets of temples and houses, with some diyas set adrift on rivers and streams. In Bengal the night belongs to Kali rather than Lakshmi. According to Rachel Fell McDermott, a scholar of Bengali studies, textual evidence suggests Bengali Hindus worshipped Lakshmi before the colonial era and that the Kali puja is a more recent phenomenon. The fourth day is regionally called Annakut, Padwa, or Govardhan Puja. Annakut means mountain of food, and communities prepare over one hundred dishes dedicated to Krishna before sharing them. The fifth day, Bhai Duj, celebrates the bond between sister and brother, with the brother travelling to meet his sister, who welcomes him with a tilaka. Artisan Hindu and Sikh communities mark a day for Vishwakarma Puja, cleaning their looms, tools, and machines and offering prayers to the deity of crafts and building trades.

• 5. A Written History

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  Padma Purana and Skanda Purana, both composed between the 7th and 10th centuries, are among the early Sanskrit texts that mention the festival. The Skanda Kishore Purana describes the diyas as symbolising parts of the sun, the cosmic giver of light and energy. Emperor Harsha named the festival in his 7th-century Sanskrit play Nagananda, calling it Dipapratipadotsava, a festival where lamps were lit and newly engaged brides and grooms received gifts. Rajasekhara, in his 9th-century Kavyamimamsa, called it Dipamalika and described homes being whitewashed and oil lamps decorating streets and markets at night. Travellers from outside India left their own records. The Persian historian Al Biruni, in his 11th-century memoir, wrote of the festival being celebrated by Hindus on the new moon of Kartika. The Venetian merchant Niccolo de' Conti, who visited in the early 15th century, described temples and rooftops fixed with an innumerable number of oil lamps kept burning day and night, with families clothing themselves in new garments to sing, dance, and feast. The 16th-century Portuguese traveller Domingo Paes saw the festival celebrated in October in the Vijayanagara Empire, with householders illuminating their homes and temples with lamps. Islamic historians noted it too. The Mughal emperor Akbar welcomed and joined the festivities, while Aurangzeb banned festivals such as Diwali and Holi in 1665. Stone and copper inscriptions across India carry names like Dipotsava and Divalige. A 10th-century Rashtrakuta copper plate of Krishna III, who reigned from 939 to 967 CE, mentions Dipotsava. The German Indologist Lorenz Franz Kielhorn translated a 13th-century Ranganatha temple inscription of the Venad king Ravivarman Samgramadhira, which speaks of the auspicious festival of lights which disperses the most profound darkness. A 10th-century Jain Saundatti inscription records a donation of oil for the festival's rituals.

• 6. An Official Holiday

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  Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and California are the three U.S. states where Diwali is an official holiday as of October 2025, with California making it a state holiday in October 2025. The main day, the day of Lakshmi Puja, is an official holiday in a dozen countries, including Fiji, Guyana, India, Malaysia, Mauritius, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago. The festival has drawn political attention well beyond India's borders. The Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue began sending the Pope's message to Hindus on Diwali in the mid-1990s. Since 2009, Diwali has been celebrated every year at 10 Downing Street, the residence of the British Prime Minister, and the former Prince Charles has attended celebrations at the Swaminarayan Temple in Neasden. George W. Bush first celebrated Diwali in the White House in 2003, and the United States Congress officially recognised its significance in 2007. Barack Obama became the first president to personally attend Diwali at the White House in 2009. Donald J. Trump posted an official statement celebrating Diwali in October 2025, and a similar message by FBI Director Kash Patel drew a flood of racist and xenophobic invective from Christian nationalists and other MAGA-aligned individuals. At the India-Pakistan border, Indian forces approach their Pakistani counterparts each Diwali bearing traditional Indian confectionery, a gesture returned in kind with Pakistani sweets.

• 7. Lights And Their Cost

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  Anar, a firework also called the fountain, has been found responsible for 65% of Diwali burn injuries, with adults the typical victims. Most of these are Group I burns, classed as minor and requiring only outpatient care, and experts urge that children be kept a safe distance from flames. The smoke from firecrackers is the larger toll. After firing, fine dust particles settle on surrounding surfaces packed with chemicals like copper, zinc, sodium, lead, magnesium, and cadmium, along with oxides of sulfur and nitrogen. The resulting smog sometimes takes days to clear, and the suspended particulate matter can leave people with eye, nose, and throat problems. To produce colours when crackers burst, carcinogenic and poisonous elements are used. The scale of the pollution can be extreme. During the 2023 celebration, New Delhi briefly took the top spot in the world for air pollution with an air quality index of 680 on one night. The economic scale is just as large. Diwali is comparable to the Christmas period in consumer purchases, a time when households buy new clothing, gold, jewellery, and home refurbishments because such purchases are considered auspicious to Lakshmi. According to Rao, rural Indians spend a significant portion of their annual income during the festival. Indian stock markets like the NSE and BSE typically close for Diwali, with the exception of a one-hour Diwali Muhurat trading session held in the evening to coincide with the new year.