Diwali: India's Festival of Lights

For anyone in India or the Indian diaspora nostalgic for ancient times, there’s a difficult choice to be made each fall on which hero to worship during Diwali, India's festival of lights.

Hindus in northern India celebrate Diwali as the homecoming of the warrior King Rama of Ayodhya after a 14 year battle that ended with the defeat of the evil king Ravana.
Legend has it that the people of Ayodhya lit the road of the king’s return with oil lamps to ease his path from darkness into light.

Hinduism, being a collection of sects, has other origins for Diwali. In Gujurat, Hindus recall the killing of Narakasura, an evil demon, by Lord Krishna and his wife Satyabhama, while others see in Diwali an occasion to celebrate the birth of the goddess Lakshmi.

Buddhists in Nepal, and followers of Jainism have their own reasons to celebrate Diwali, as do Sikhs, who use the occasion to commemorate the return of their sixth Guru, Har Gobind Ji (1595-1644), after he gained freedom from captivity in the city of Gwalior at the hands of the Mughal emperor Jahangir.

The elder gods disapprove, but few in India take much notice of these ancient roots. Instead, they revel each year in yet another calendar event with shared meals with friends and family.

Diwali, which falls each year in either October or November, depending on the lunar calendar, is traditionally known by its Sanskrit name Deepavali, which means 'a row of lights'. The feast holiday is also marked with long and bountiful meals of sweets and savories during a period of thanksgiving.

Typically, Diwali begins each year under the haze of a dawn sunshine, when shoppers sparing little expense at the local market buy amid hawker’s cries, blaring car horns and the occasional blast of fireworks required ingredients to make popular festive dishes on the day: semolina, chickpea, milk, almonds, raisins and coconut.

Overhead everywhere are arrayed diyas, or cotton-like string wicks inserted in clay pots filled with coconut oil, that are lit at night to symbolize many things to many different people: paying homage to the gods, to what is positive during a calendar event of new beginnings, to the triumph of light over darkness, and of good over evil.

Like many gift giving and shopping festivals, Diwali is best known for its mithai, or sweets, handed out to friends and family as part of offerings to the Gods. The range of sweets on sale in specialty shops during Diwali would make Charlie in the chocolate factory envious: Kaju Katli, a cashew treat, Barfi, made with coconut, and almond seera, made with almonds, milk, sugar and ghee, or clarified butter.

Diwali cooking, like Indian cooking itself, varies between regions within India, and from country to country worldwide. But the more popular of the holiday’s feast foods include sheera, or a sweet semolina fudge, or dhana therus, a sweet porridge made with cracked wheat and sugar that helps break a fast on the second day at sunset.

Spices like fragrant nutmeg, cardamom, and saffron season many of the Diwali dishes, producing aromas that regress the faithful back to childhood or to Grandma’s and Grandpas’ day, if not further, and bring them back to holidays year after year.

Other popular choices during Diwalki include kheer, or a a milky pudding prepared with crushed rice, milk sugar and sago, or vegetarian dishes – as many Hindus shun meat. These include puri's, or a fried flat bread, or pakoras, or a fried potato and vegetable dumplings often eaten with chutney.

But surely it can’t be only popular Indian dishes that are eaten at any other time of the year that has sustained Diwali as a national holiday through the ages.

The answer to its staying power is instead found in a martial holiday that fits nicely into this book’s mould: a calendar event that celebrates victory over evil in a way that defines a group’s identity during an historic struggle that in itself put that identity at possible breaking point.

The Hindu epic poem Ramayana, which sets out the slaying of the evil Ravana by King Rama, says of the hero’s return to Ayodha, with celebration and accompanying feast: “The people of Ayodhya were eagerly awaiting their rightful king's return. Even Rama's brother, Bharatha, was overjoyed, for he, too, wanted Rama to be king and had merely been looking after Ayodhya until his return. They lit rows and rows of lamps to brighten the dark night and greet the royal couple. Rama's coronation was celebrated by a burst of fireworks and a great feast. Fine clothes and sweets were distributed to everyone.

And, to this day, many Hindus celebrate the defeat of Ravana and the return of Rama from exile by lighting lamps on this darkest night of the year!

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There, in a nutshell, is the promise of martial holidays. Beyond the arrayed sweet and savories from the kitchen is something very primal: a hero, bathed in the light of reflected glory. The mysticism and appeal of the burning light as a symbol of hope and freedom after the triumph of good over evil is a recurring theme of holidays that commemorate historic battles.

The Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, an eight-day winter holiday with origins of nearly 2,000 years when the Judah Maccabee and his small band of followers defeated Antiochus of Syria and reclaimed their temple, is also a festival of lights. Lighted candles on a menorah, or candelabra, and dreidels help celebrate the Jewish holiday that falls on Kislev 25 in the Jewish calendar, usually in December.

And the symbolic dishes that accompany Hanukah, whether fried latkes (potato pancakes) or sufganiyot (donuts), both like matzoh on Passover recalls a past need to eat quickly in times of battle, and are fried in oil, a symbol of the miraculous oil that lit the temple for the Maccabees.

But at the center of Hanukah is Judah Maccabee, who saved the hour for the Jews of Syria. Martial holidays all have their hero. Somewhere out there, a hero has been, or is coming. In Biblical lore, it’s heroes like Abraham, Moses and David, portrayed as ordinary men called to action by God. In Hinduism, it’s a King Rama, in Muslim lore …, good men all that surged to the fore in times of need.

Modern-day martial holidays have spawned their own military lions, generals like Napoleon and Wellington that stood tall in the face of danger and threat. Whether as ordinary soldiers or fearsome war lords, they too have been able to part the battlefield as if the seas to enable a daring thrust or safe escape.

Boiled down, the heroes of martial holidays are really all ruthless military leaders that avenged their people on the battlefield in a primal struggle for survival against wrongful enemies. And as we will see, the heroes of our study are not mere dead relics of history. They instead personify timeless aspirations for freedom and liberty and justice. And through festive dishes and holidays that recall their glory and possibly their name, these heroes are made incarnate.

History has also thrown up a share of woman that saved the day and lives of their people – Joan of Arc, Queen Victoria, Hua Mulan, Harriet Tubman. Each was as brave in the midst of danger as their martial ancestors, and enjoy a calendar day set aside for them. They too, like their male counterparts, through the tumult of time and circumstance, led their people to safety and victory. And in this hitherto unstudied and unspoken nexus of the chaotic and the culinary, we will see that, by their bravery, heroic leaders inspired and continue to inspire gratitude, and by their courage, admiration.

As their followers put it, their grit and total dedication led each heroic leader to victory. And there’s something ironically soothing about a past historical figure, really a composite of generations of hopes and aspirations, had your own and those of your people’s best interests at heart. Even if we hardly know much about these heroic figures. And we know very little about these heroic leaders. So as they gather and eat together on commemorative days, the call goes out to those who follow to exhibit the same qualities in their own lives as they equate the struggle for religious or national freedom in the past with their own struggle, and that of their group or nation for political freedom in the modern era.