Why Diwali Is Celebrated: Six Different Answers

Ask why Diwali is celebrated and you will get a different answer in Ayodhya, in Chennai, in a Jain household in Gujarat and in a gurdwara in Amritsar. All of them are correct. Diwali is not one festival with one origin story that later spread. It is several observances that happen to land on the same new moon, and they have been sitting on top of each other for a very long time.

The name is the one thing nobody argues about. Deepavali comes from the Sanskrit dipa, a lamp, and avali, a row. A row of lights. Everything after that depends on who you ask.

Rama comes home

The version most widely told across north India is the return to Ayodhya. Rama, Sita, Lakshmana and Hanuman arrive after fourteen years of exile and the defeat of Ravana, and the city lights lamps along the route to bring them in. The lamps in this telling are a welcome rather than a ward.

Krishna kills Narakasura

In the Braj region, in Assam and among Tamil and Telugu communities, the festival marks Krishna's defeat of the demon king Narakasura and the freeing of sixteen thousand captive women. The day before Diwali is named for it. Naraka Chaturdashi is Narakasura's day, which is why parts of the south treat the fourteenth rather than the new moon as the main event and begin it with an oil bath before dawn.

Lakshmi comes out of the ocean

A third account, closest to what actually happens in most homes on the night, has Lakshmi emerging from the churning of the cosmic ocean, with Diwali night marking her marriage to Vishnu. This is the reason the puja is timed to a fixed rising sign and not merely to a convenient evening. The idea is that she settles where she is received well.

Kali, in the east

In Bengal, Odisha and Assam the same night is Kali Puja. The deity is different, the temperament of the festival is different, and the meaning attached to it is the older and blunter one of good defeating evil.

Two religions that are not celebrating Diwali at all

This is the part usually left out of the explainer articles.

For Jains the date is Mahavira Nirvana Divas. It marks the death and nirvana of the twenty-fourth Tirthankara in 527 BCE, and the tradition holds that eighteen kings ordered lamps lit in memory of "the great light, Mahavira." The lamps stand in for a light that has gone out. That is close to the opposite of a welcome.

For Sikhs the day is Bandi Chhor Divas, the day of release. Guru Hargobind was freed from imprisonment at Gwalior Fort by the emperor Jahangir and reached Amritsar, and the Golden Temple was lit for his arrival. Two other anniversaries fall near it: the founding of Amritsar in 1577 and the martyrdom of Bhai Mani Singh in 1738. Calling Bandi Chhor Divas "Sikh Diwali" is common and is not quite right.

Newar Buddhists in Nepal, unusually among Buddhists, do offer prayers to Lakshmi as part of Tihar.

Why it matters that there are several

A festival with one origin has one correct way to keep it. A festival with six does not, which is why the customs vary so sharply between two families who would both say they celebrate Diwali. It also explains the fights about timing. If your household is marking Narakasura, the important hours are before sunrise on the fourteenth. If it is marking Lakshmi, they are after sunset on the new moon, which in 2026 is Sunday 8 November.

The same thing happens with the Karwa Chauth katha, where three separate stories are told for one fast and none of them agrees with the others.