Diwali

If we are to select one festival that every Hindu in every corner of India celebrates in some form or the other, we would invariably mention ‘Diwali’. It epitomises the operational plurality of Hinduism that has thrived for millennia without a high command, headquarters or one designated holy book.

From Tagore’s beautiful words, ‘Ei BharaterMaha-Manaber Sagar-tirey’(From the shores of the vast ocean of humanity, India) to Nehru’s ‘Unity in Diversity’, we have excellent poetic expressions and vivid descriptions of the wondrous plurality that personifies India. But we need to delve deeper into the process through which this unity was actually achieved amidst wide diversity and Deepavali or Diwali is a good case study of the process.