UPDATED: Nov. 8, 2018 at 3:30 p.m.

Tula Goenka sat in her parents’ home in India, lighting miniature lamps alongside her two young children in fall 2003. The house was spotless, scrubbed clean as part of their annual fall cleaning. The sweet fragrances of cardamom, cinnamon and nutmeg wafted through the air as her family prepared the evening’s festive sweets. Beyond the flickering lamps, firecrackers could be seen illuminating the night sky, signifying that Diwali — the Hindu Festival of Lights — was well underway.

“It’s like Christmas,” said Goenka, a professor of television, radio and film in Newhouse. “You go into the stores, you go into the streets, and everybody is celebrating it.”

For Hindus, Diwali is a celebration commemorating the power of light overcoming darkness, commonly referred to as “the festival of lights.” The name “Diwali” derives from the Sanskrit word “dīpāvali,” translating to “row or series of lights.” The festival is celebrated every autumn following the end of the summer harvest and corresponds with the darkest night of the Hindu lunisolar calendar on the new moon.

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This weekend, members of Syracuse University’s South Asian Students Association will host a weekend celebration of the autumn festival, hoping to shed new light on the beauty and diversity on one of Hinduism’s most sacred holidays.

Included in this year’s celebration is the Light Up the Orange Grove event on Thursday, sponsored by Hendricks Chapel, the South Asia Center in the Maxwell School and the College of Arts and Sciences’ Art and Music Histories department. Romita Ray, an associate professor of art history and chair of the department of art and music histories, began the first Light Up the Orange Grove in 2015. During the event, students and faculty will light 1700 luminaries on the quad.

On Saturday, SASA will host their Festival of Lights Celebration at 8:30 p.m. in Goldstein Auditorium. The event costs $7 and is open to the public.

Just as the religious and cultural practices of India are varied, the festival’s religious significance is as well. Not every South Asian person is Hindu; some are Buddhist, while others are Jains, Sikhs, Christian or Muslim. Different regions in India celebrate the holiday on different dates and have different observed traditions.

Some Hindus associate Diwali with the festival of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and prosperity. Others correlate the celebration to the Hindu epic “Ramayana,” viewing Diwali as a marking of Rama’s army of good defeating the demon king Ravana’s army of evil.

But even those who are not active practitioners still find comfort in the nostalgia of the holiday and its connection to their identity. For Hindu students at SU, the festival is not only about the prospects of wealth or an observance of light overcoming darkness. It’s also an opportunity to openly practice their faith and share in their beliefs with those who may have never been exposed to Hinduism before.

“It’s mainly just a time to spread joy, spread happiness,” said Prabhanjan Balakrishnan, the head of finance for SASA. In India, Balakrishnan said the celebration begins early in the morning, with families going door-to-door to visit their neighbors and loved ones and wishing them a happy Diwali. The nights, he said, are painted with brilliant fireworks displays in backyards.

Balakrishnan said SASA hopes to bring those same traditions to SU’s campus, sharing their faith with those who may not be practitioners. For their Diwali celebration on Saturday, the event will feature traditional Bollywood music and dancing and of course, Balakrishnan said, plenty of food to go around.

“It’s not successful without food,” he said, laughing.

Given that SU is a predominantly white campus, Balakrishnan said he hopes Diwali can help promote conversations between non-Hindus about the importance of religious diversity on campus.

“I feel like it would be a good exposure for them, not just for issues of cultural appropriation but just to see that there’s more to the world,” he said. “Within a religion, you pray but you also can have a good time. It’s more about embracing the culture, and people enjoy that.”

Goenka echoed Balakrishnan’s sentiments. Having lived in the United States for 34 years and serving as SASA’s faculty sponsor for nearly 15 years, she said the ways South Asians observe Diwali in the U.S. differ in its size and public recognition.

“It was my favorite holiday — it goes on for days, it’s not only a one day celebration. Everything in India is days long,” she said. “In America, that doesn’t really happen. It’s a much smaller holiday for the people celebrating it. It’s not in the general consciousness.”

By providing festivals and events centered around Hindu culture, Balakrishnan said he hopes South Asian students recognize that there is a community for them at Syracuse.

But SASA doesn’t only focus on the Indian student population at SU. The organization embraces the cultures of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka, among others. The common thread linking members is not their faith or their family origins, he said — it comes down to shedding the stereotypes they’ve been cast in and to be seen as equal members of the SU community.

“Most stereotypes are like, if you don’t become a doctor, if you don’t become a lawyer, if you don’t become an engineer, you aren’t doing anything with your life,” he said. “But there’s so much more to us than that.”

As SASA continues to grow in prominence on campus, Balakrishnan said he hopes the organization can bring guest Hindu speakers and comedians to campus to reaffirm for students that their identities are valid. Events like this weekend’s Diwali, he said, continue to promote these open dialogues and, hopefully, shift perspectives.

The beauty of Diwali, Balakrishnan said, doesn’t extend from grand parties or dazzling light displays. It’s the prospect of being able to start anew, sharing in this hope for prosperity with family and friends.

When Balakrishnan was 15, he spent Diwali in the Indian city Mysore. At 4 a.m., his mother woke him up, saying the festivities were about to begin. Giving him a firework and some matches, Balakrishnan journeyed out into the streets, setting off fireworks as the neighborhood came to life.

“Eventually, people just start showing up, and it becomes like a street festival,” he said.

The sun began to rise over the horizon, casting brilliant shades of red and orange with specks of gold across the earth. A new day was dawning.

A new light had arrived.

CLARIFICATION: In a previous version of this article, the relationship between the Light Up the Orange Grove event and the South Asian Students Association was unclear. 

Published on November 7, 2018 at 2:07 am

Contact Kelsey: katho101@syr.edu | @writtenbykelsey