Roundtable

Is Diwali Our Cup of Tea?
The Roundtable Open Forum # 107

RAVI SINGH

Reflecting on the recent Diwali celebrations at various gurdwaras in Southern California, I found myself questioning what we as Sikhs are doing celebrating Diwali.

The only answer I could find to the question seemed to be culture and tradition. Over the past week I have seen many debates regarding this question. It would seem worthwhile to consider the popular reasons we celebrate Diwali at gurdwaras.

One of the main bases used to rationalize celebrating Diwali in gurdwaras is the following shabad by Bhai Gurdas:

Lamps are lighted on the night of the divali festival.

Stars of different variety appear in the sky.

In the gardens the flowers are there which are selectively plucked.

The pilgrims going to pilgrimage centres are also seen.

The imaginary habitats have been seen coming into being and vanishing.

All these are momentary, but the gurmukhs,

With the help of the Word, nourish the gift of the pleasure fruit.   [Vaars:19]


If only the first verse is read by itself, one can see why Sikhs would think gurbani supports the celebration of Diwali. However, a growing number of Sikhs are reading beyond the first verse, as they should, and realizing there is a context that arises, providing a different picture.

In the shabad, various practices are mentioned ranging from lighting lamps on Diwali to picking flowers for worship, to the performance of pilgrimages -- and all are dismissed as superficial and momentary. In the last verse the Word is extolled as being the exclusive source of empowerment for a gurmukh (loosely translated as one who follows the Guru’s teachings).

The fact of the matter is that Diwali has no significance for Sikhs, yet we celebrate it as if it is our own holiday. Our continued celebration of Diwali is slowly leading to attribution of the holiday to Sikhism along with Hinduism and Jainism. The celebration of various Hindu holidays is one reason among the many that Hinduism is slowly subsuming the Sikh identity. In fact, a Google search of the words “Sikhism Diwali” yields several websites, some run by Sikhs, that say Sikhs celebrate Diwali, but our significance is different.

Even worse yet, one such result even goes as far as saying: “Two Punjabi social festivals which were incorporated into Sikhism by the Gurus are Visakhi and Diwali”. (http://www.sikh-history.com/sikhhist/events/diwali.html).

Forgive me if I’m wrong, but none of the Gurus to my knowledge incorporated Diwali into Sikh practice.

At best, history shows Sikhs gathered during Bhai Mani Singh’s time on Diwali to discuss matters of panthic importance and not to celebrate Diwali. Whereas, nowadays Sikhs gather at the gurdwara just to eat delicacies and light candles, in a mela-like fashion, which in itself is problematic, but won’t be addressed in this piece.

Perhaps it is time to take a serious look at why we celebrate Diwali and consider the implications of our actions, as well as ways we can bring ourselves closer to the vision the Gurus had for us.

Celebrating Diwali as a gesture of of solidarity with our Hindu neighbors can no longer stand in the face of logic and reason. If solidarity was truly a reason, why do we not celebrate holidays like Ramadan to show solidarity with our Muslim neighbors? And why don’t Hindus celebrate Sikh holidays in their own places of worship. After all, isn’t solidarity a two-way street requiring both parties to express a mutual respect for one another’s traditions? Wouldn’t recognizing the holidays of other cultures and religions and wishing them well be enough to show solidarity and oneness?

Beyond solidarity, a lot of people insist we must celebrate Diwali in gurdwaras on the basis of culture and tradition. Their reasoning is even extended to other holidays such as Rakhi or Lohri, with the idea that these are not religious holidays; they are cultural and therefore acceptable to celebrate. Their reasoning is repeated with such conviction that one would think, the history and the very nature of the acts involved in celebrating the holidays have ceased to exist or have no bearing on the existence of the holiday itself.

Such thinking is contrary to the traditions established by Guru Nanak which mandate that we examine our practices, both religious and cultural to ensure they make sense and bring us closer to Waheguru. In this sense, our celebration of Diwali at gurdwaras is a particularly troubling sign of a failure in this regard and has lead to cultural stagnation. We are so caught up in the inertia of culture that we don’t even attempt to examine the basis for these things.

And to make matters worse we make efforts such as the one now being made to rebrand Diwali celebrations as Bandi Chhor Diwas.

Our efforts in trying to justify the celebration of Diwali are misguided and subversive as to our Sikh identity. First and foremost, there is no evidence to show that Bandi Chhor Diwas falls on the same day as Diwali, which renders any attempt to rebrand it misguided. These actions in and of themselves are an attempt to generate an alibi. The subversiveness however is more subtle and lies in the subject of a new dialogue in which those who dare to challenge culture are branded as being misguided and/or separatists.

The gist of the argument is that by excluding the celebration of something, which isn’t proper to celebrate in a gurdwara in the first place, these individuals are attempting to separate Sikhs from established tradition and culture.

What we need to ask ourselves is this: How is it that we’ve come to label those who seek to discover/realize more fully the identity bestowed upon us by our Gurus as separatists?

Are we slaves to tradition and culture, or are we Sikhs of the Guru that try our best to follow gurbani even if it goes against what is popularly considered tradition and culture?

If this debate sounds vaguely familiar, there is a reason; all one would have to do is look back to Sikh history where the Gurus, as well as a long line of martyrs and scholars defied long-established culture and traditions, by applying reason, logic, and gurbani. In the same way, the panth needs to come together to consider whether we are to be a faith guided and governed by the Guru or a panth guided by traditions and culture.

THE ROUNDTABLE OPEN FORUM # 107

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[The author is an entrepreneur based in Californa, USA.]

November 9, 2013

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