The hashtag “Diwali “on social media yields all sorts of results- brands promoting apparel in the name of Diwali, celebrities promoting themselves in the name of Diwali, pics of Bollywood Diwali parties, random promotional pics of restaurants and like that have got nothing to do with Diwali, etc. The list is endless. The name “Diwali” has become such a brand in Bharat that anyone and everyone uses the name of this important Hindu festival to sell anything and everything.
While commercialization is inevitable with everything and with branding also comes livelihood opportunities for millions, so one is not really complaining about the commercialization bit. But the appropriation of a Hindu festival to such an extent that its roots get lost is certainly an area of concern.
Our festivals are getting lost in the buzz of business marketing just as they are becoming the victims of over-the-top secularization. Diwali is the best example of that.
In the popular 21st-century psyche, Diwali is a happy-go-lucky festival associated with wearing colorful clothes, going out for fancy Diwali nights, shopping till you drop, and exchanging expensive gifts. But is that all Diwali means? Unfortunately, the religious significance of Diwali and something as basic to the festival as Lakshmi Poojan is lost in the Bharat of the 21st-century.
I come from a Bharatiya family in the north of India and in our household, Diwali rituals are about Lakshmi Ganesh pooja. New earthen idols of lord Ganesha and Devi Lakshmi are a must for every Diwali, and so are earthen diyas that are a part of the pooja celebrations. It’s only after the pooja that the diyas are lighted outside.
I am sure every family has different rituals when it comes to Diwali, but these rituals are somewhere getting lost in the 21st century Bharat. People buying fancy designer diyas and lighting them outside without any pooja ceremony are missing out a lot on the essence of Diwali. I am not saying they are doing this out of some malafide intention. But they are unknowingly turning the festival into a mindless rootless celebration.
If we take the rituals out, all Hindu festivals will seem to be colorful carnivalesque celebrations. And that’s how the woke lobby portrays them. Diwali becomes Jashn-e-Riwaaz or Jashn-e-Roshni. If anyone dares to speak against this appropriation, they are immediately branded as intolerant, non-secular, and Hindutva elements. Can you imagine doing this kind of daring linguistic appropriation with festivals like Eid or Christmas? Why is it then that only Hindus are expected to bear the brunt of all the “secularism” and annihilate their identities, customs, and rituals to prove they are secular? Can’t one be secular by calling Diwali by its name?
A Diwali invite went viral on social media recently where the FSSAI of the Ministry of Health and Family welfare is inviting people to celebrate “Jashn-e-Roshni”. After this poster went viral, FSSAI, however denied organizing any such event on the occasion of Diwali, according to an article published in OpIndia magazine. According to the OpIndia article, FSSAI said that the image being shared was not issued or approved by FSSAI. However, FSSAI did organize an event called “Jashn-e-Roshni” in 2022 to celebrate the festive season.
It’s hard to find out what’s the exact truth regarding this controversy. But it certainly sheds ample light on the issue of forceful secularization of Hindu festivals.
Shefali Vaidya, prominent author and speaker on issues concerning Hindus and Bharat, has shared a post on X in this regard in which she calls out FSSAI India for trying to do damage control after the event poster was exposed as it had organized a similar event last year as well.
Hindu festivals have been secularized to such an extent that even the festival greetings have been appropriated with imagery from other religions to soft-sell conversions. One comes across many Diwali greetings and posters featuring the figure of Jesus Christ wishing light to everyone. Unfortunately, this disgusting appropriation of Hindu festivals is rampant and the Christian proselytization lobby gets into a hyperactive mode during the Hindu festive season.
An X account by the name of “Diocese of Jalandhar” has a post from last year with visuals of Jesus Christ wishing Happy Diwali to all. This X account describes itself as “Official twitter account of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Jalandhar. Situated in the North-West of India, spread mainly in Punjab and Himachal Pradesh”.
This is just one example from a vast maze of anti-Hindu propaganda on Hindu festivals. It’s scary to even think about how many hapless Hindus are being targeted during the festive season all over Bharat to boost conversions.
When so many Hindus are ignorant of their own traditions and take pride in celebrating Diwali like Christmas, you cannot really expect them to counter this propaganda. Last year, I saw so many Facebook posts after Diwali with Bharatiyas posting pictures of themselves wearing ethnic clothes and just posing with family as Diwali pics. No Diyas, no crackers, no pooja pics. It just looked like any other family gathering. But such is the vast sea of propaganda against Hindu Dharma that woke Hindus who take pride in organizing Halloween parties and sharing pics of Christmas trees on social media, shy away from posting pics of Diyas and Lakshmi Ganesh pooja on Diwali.
Diwali celebrations have been traditionally marked by the exchange of Bharatiya sweets known colloquially as Mithai. But nowadays, mithai is missing from the Diwali gift package with chocolates and other kinds of fancy gift packs having taken over. This is a subtle change, not immediately noticeable but it’s happening, and this is precisely how the essence of Bharatiya culture is slowly destroyed and so many professions associated with the traditions of Hindu festivals are seeing a decline.
Popular culture has played a crucial role in this subtle but steady and dangerous secularization of Hindu festivals over the years. Now, the new trend is that the Hindu festivals are being clubbed together with Christmas and New Year as the holiday season.
It’s hard to see a single article in any Bharatiya publication that talks about Diwali from the point of view of Hindu tradition. All you see is either the appropriation of Diwali for selling commercial stuff or its forceful secularization as Jashn-e-Rivaaz or Festival of Lights.
We spoke to Rekha Achyutuni, Founder, of Hindu Parenting, and co-host at the Hindu Parenting Podcast. Hindu Parenting podcasts play an important role in creating awareness about Bharatiya traditions amongst parents and children alike. According to Rekha Achyutuni, they have done podcasts on festivals like Durga Pooja and Ganesh Chaturthi. The main idea behind these podcasts is to create awareness about the religious significance of these Hindu festivals. Also, people learn to appreciate the nuances of different local rituals as the same festival will have variations in rituals even in different areas of the same city so that makes people share their knowledge base, she says.
When it comes to the possible solutions to make Diwali return to its roots, Rekha jee says that the solution lies within the family structure, the present generation who are kids need to be sensitized so that they can escape the woke propaganda and carry forward the proud legacy of Hindu festivals when they grow up.
“Unfortunately, there are many solutions but those are much harder. The capture of the media is pretty much complete. I don’t think there is a newspaper or a magazine, an article you can hope to have that really praises, say Diwali from the Hindu point of view. Where is it there? No magazine wants to do that.
They only want to publish the secular versions. So it will be nice if we can really turn it around, if say the media or the entertainment industry, you release one beautiful movie on Diwali, like how the west releases so many movies on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and all that. They make it so aspirational. It’s all a very nice, happy season. You can easily create that around Dusshehra, Diwali for us. But our movie industry doesn’t do that and our ads, articles, nothing does that. So the final bastion is only the family.
So we have to learn to do it in the family and hope that gradually, when the children who are being currently grounded well in traditions, when they grow up, maybe they can produce these great wonderful movies and make us feel good about our culture. That’s where we lost out completely”, she says.
