Diwali: Light, Return, and Ethical Renewal

The five days of Diwali explained: Dhanteras to Bhai Dooj, with the regional stories behind them, how Jains and Sikhs mark the same nights, and practical notes for celebrating safely.

A festival of many regions

Diwali (Deepavali, “row of lamps”) is celebrated across India and the diaspora with lamps, sweets, prayer, and family gathering. Regional calendars and stories differ: some communities emphasize Rama’s return to Ayodhya, others Krishna’s defeat of the tyrant Narakasura, still others business-new-year customs and the worship of Lakshmi. The festival is not one story told everywhere but a season of light into which many communities pour their own memories.

Light as teaching

The lamp is more than decoration. Lighting a diya is a household ritual that makes an ethical claim visible: clarity should push back against confusion; generosity should push back against closed-handedness. Children learn this long before they can explain philosophy.

The five days, one by one

What most people call “Diwali” is actually the third day of a five-day sequence in the lunar month of Karttika. Each day has its own name, deity, and mood.

Dhanteras opens the festival on the thirteenth day of the dark fortnight (dhan means wealth, teras means thirteenth). Households clean thoroughly, light the first lamp of the season, and traditionally buy a small item of metal, gold, silver, or simply a new utensil, as a token of incoming prosperity. The day honors Dhanvantari, the divine physician associated with Ayurveda, alongside Lakshmi and Kubera, which is why health and wealth are prayed for together.

Naraka Chaturdashi, or Choti (“small”) Diwali, remembers Krishna’s victory over the demon-king Narakasura. Many families rise before dawn for an abhyanga snan, a ritual oil bath understood as washing away the year’s accumulated grime, inner as much as outer. In much of South India this, not the following day, is the principal day of Deepavali.

Lakshmi Puja is the main night, falling on the new moon, the darkest night of the month. Rows of diyas line windowsills and doorways, rangoli patterns mark thresholds, and families perform an evening puja to Lakshmi, goddess of prosperity, together with Ganesha, remover of obstacles. In North India this is also the night associated with Rama, Sita, and Lakshmana returning to Ayodhya after fourteen years of exile, the citizens are said to have lit lamps to welcome them home, a scene rooted in the closing movement of the Valmiki Ramayana’s Yuddha Kanda.

Govardhan Puja, also called Annakut (“mountain of food”), recalls Krishna lifting Govardhan Hill to shelter the villagers of Braj from Indra’s storms. Temples and homes prepare tiered offerings of food in gratitude, a festival day that is, at heart, about the dependence of human life on land, rain, and cattle. In Gujarat this day doubles as the new year, Bestu Varas, when merchants open fresh account books.

Bhai Dooj closes the sequence with siblings. Sisters mark their brothers’ foreheads with tilak and pray for their long life; brothers give gifts and pledge protection. The founding story tells of Yama, lord of death, visiting his sister Yamuna, whose loving welcome earned a promise of well-being for all brothers honored this way.

Whose story is it? Regional threads

The same lamps carry different narratives depending on where you stand. North Indian tellings center Rama’s homecoming. In the South, the Narakasura story dominates, and the pre-dawn oil bath is the emotional peak of the festival. Merchant communities in Gujarat and elsewhere treat the season as a fiscal and spiritual reset, closing old ledgers before Lakshmi Puja. And in Bengal, the same new-moon night is Kali Puja: the goddess worshipped there is not gentle Lakshmi but fierce Kali, destroyer of ego and protector of her devotees. None of these is the “real” Diwali; the festival’s genius is its capacity to hold them all.

The Jain Diwali: a lamp for a teacher

For Jains, this new-moon night marks something quite different: the nirvana of Mahavira, the twenty-fourth Tirthankara, who by tradition attained final liberation at Pavapuri in present-day Bihar in 527 BCE. Early Jain texts say that with the light of his knowledge gone from the world, kings and townspeople lit ordinary lamps in its place, one traditional explanation of why this night belongs to light at all. Jain households celebrate with marked austerity: temple visits, recitation of the Uttaradhyayana Sutra (held to contain Mahavira’s final teachings), fasting among many Shvetambara Jains, and the offering of nirvan ladoo. Firecrackers are generally avoided because they harm insects and other small beings, a direct application of ahimsa, the principle of non-harm. The Jain new year begins the very next day. Readers curious about Jain observance more broadly may enjoy our piece on Paryushana.

Bandi Chhor Divas: the Sikh day of liberation

Sikhs mark the season as Bandi Chhor Divas, the “day of the release of prisoners.” The sixth Guru, Guru Hargobind, had been imprisoned by the Mughal emperor Jahangir in Gwalior Fort. When his release was ordered, the Guru refused to walk free unless fifty-two imprisoned princes were freed with him. Jahangir ruled that only those who could hold onto the Guru’s garment might leave, so a cloak with fifty-two tassels was made, and all fifty-two walked out grasping it. The Guru’s return to Amritsar coincided with Diwali, and the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple) was illuminated in welcome, as it still is each year. In 2003 the Sikh calendar formally adopted the name Bandi Chhor Divas, underlining that the Sikh celebration commemorates liberation and moral courage, not the Hindu narratives. Gurdwaras mark the day with kirtan, continuous scripture reading, lamps, and langar, the shared meal that turns celebration into seva, everyday service.

Practice at home

Common threads across communities include cleaning the home, preparing food to share, offering prayers, visiting temples or gurdwaras, and reconciling with relatives. Older emphases, hospitality, the clearing of debts, gratitude for prosperity rather than mere display of it, remain available to anyone who chooses them. Modern markets wrap Diwali in shopping, but the festival’s own logic pushes the other way: whom are we including at our table, and what resentments are we ready to set down before the new year’s ledger opens?

Celebrating safely

Fireworks are the festival’s most contested modern element. Air quality in North Indian cities routinely deteriorates sharply in the days around Diwali, when firecracker smoke stacks on top of seasonal crop-residue burning and cool, still air; India’s Central Pollution Control Board documents the spike annually, and courts have repeatedly restricted cracker use in Delhi. Households that want the sparkle without the smoke have options: more diyas and fewer bombs, certified low-emission “green crackers” where permitted, community displays instead of street-by-street bursts, and consideration for asthmatic neighbors, infants, elders, street animals, and pets, for whom the noise is genuinely distressing. Basic diya care matters too, lamps away from curtains, cotton wicks attended, children supervised. A festival about light over darkness sits oddly with a week of unbreathable air; adapting the celebration is not diluting it.

Respect across communities

As the Jain and Sikh observances show, communities may share a night of lamps while meaning very different things by it. Good neighbors learn the differences rather than assuming one story fits all, and greet each tradition in its own terms.