Vi­jay Ma­haraj

The cel­e­bra­tion of re­li­gious ob­ser­vances and hol­i­days that are guid­ed by fixed cal­en­dar dates has less con­tro­ver­sy than those that must be cal­cu­lat­ed coun­try by coun­try, ac­cord­ing to the po­si­tion of the sun, moon, stars, and the lat­i­tude and lon­gi­tude of the par­tic­u­lar coun­try.

Oc­ca­sion­al­ly, there is con­tro­ver­sy over the date on which cer­tain Hin­du fes­ti­vals are ob­served.

In or­der to gain a clear un­der­stand­ing of the cor­rect date for any fes­ti­val in Trinidad and To­ba­go or any­where in the world, it is es­sen­tial to have an un­der­stand­ing of the rules that gov­ern each fes­ti­val, as well as an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for time dif­fer­ences be­tween dif­fer­ent places in the world, or with­in a coun­try or city.

It is al­so nec­es­sary to un­der­stand and con­sid­er the dif­fer­ence be­tween a cal­en­dar day, which is from one mid­night to the next mid­night or from one sun­rise to the next sun­rise.

Tithi is the time tak­en for every 12-de­gree sep­a­ra­tion be­tween the sun and the moon.

Since the speed or move­ment of the sun and the moon are con­stant­ly chang­ing, this means the du­ra­tion of a lu­nar day (tithi) will al­so change from day to day. There­fore, the start­ing and end­ing time of a lu­nar day will vary. The lu­nar day is not fixed at 24 hours.

Di­vali is cel­e­brat­ed in the month of Kar­tik, on the last night of the Kr­ish­na Paksh (the dark fort­night) that ex­tends up to sun­set. The last sun­set of the Kr­ish­na Paksh in the month of Kar­tik is the sun­set on Mon­day, Oc­to­ber 20, 2025.

There­fore, Di­vali must be cel­e­brat­ed on this cal­en­dar day and date. That is, Mon­day, Oc­to­ber 20.

The oth­er fac­tor to be con­sid­ered is the time dif­fer­ence be­tween var­i­ous coun­tries. They may have the sun­set of the Kr­ish­na Paksh on Oc­to­ber 21 and would cel­e­brate Di­vali on that night.

It should be not­ed that the time dif­fer­ence be­tween T&T and In­dia is nine and a half hours.

These fac­tors lead us in T&T to ob­serve Di­vali on Oc­to­ber 20, whilst In­dia will ob­serve on Oc­to­ber 21.

Hin­duism is now a re­li­gion that is not con­fined to the In­di­an sub­con­ti­nent. Some ob­servers claim that there are Hin­dus in at least 125 coun­tries. And these Hin­dus are not on­ly of In­di­an de­scent. In North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope, there are thou­sands of Hin­dus who are de­scend­ed from the An­go Eu­ro­peans.

The Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions were once en­joyed on­ly as a pub­lic hol­i­day in In­dia, Nepal, Sri Lan­ka, Myan­mar, Mau­ri­tius, T&T, Suri­name, Malaysia, Sin­ga­pore and Fi­ji. To­day, how­ev­er, the world recog­nis­es Di­vali and cel­e­bra­tion takes place in more than 100 coun­tries.

The name “Di­vali” is a con­trac­tion of Deep­avali, which trans­lates in­to “row of lamps.” Di­vali in­volves the light­ing of small clay lamps filled with oil to sig­ni­fy the tri­umph of good over evil. These lamps are lit dur­ing the night to wel­come the God­dess Lak­sh­mi.

Di­vali al­so marks the end of the har­vest sea­son in most of In­dia. Farm­ers give thanks for the boun­ty of the year gone by, and pray for a good har­vest for the year to come. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, this al­so marked the clos­ing of ac­counts for busi­ness­es, and is the last ma­jor cel­e­bra­tion be­fore win­ter.

Ac­cord­ing to leg­end, on Di­vali day, Lak­sh­mi emerged from Kshi­ra Sagar, the Ocean of Milk, dur­ing the great churn­ing of the oceans. The sec­ond leg­end (more pop­u­lar in west­ern In­dia) re­lates to the Va­mana avatar—the in­car­na­tion God as­sumed to kill the king Bali.

On this day al­so, Vish­nu came back to his abode, the Vaikun­tha, so those who wor­ship Lak­sh­mi re­ceived the ben­e­fit of her benev­o­lent mood, and were blessed with men­tal, phys­i­cal and ma­te­r­i­al well-be­ing.

While Di­vali is pop­u­lar­ly known as the “fes­ti­val of lights”, the most sig­nif­i­cant spir­i­tu­al mean­ing be­hind it is “the aware­ness of the in­ner light”. Light it­self is a very pop­u­lar sym­bol.

The pow­er of light tran­scends every lim­i­ta­tion and brings il­lu­mi­na­tion.

Prob­lems in the world are large­ly gen­er­at­ed through men­tal and spir­i­tu­al dark­ness or ig­no­rance, and the sa­cred fes­ti­val of Di­vali is a po­tent tool in dis­pelling the var­i­ous forms of ig­no­rance that per­vade so­ci­ety.

The cel­e­bra­tion of Di­vali as the “vic­to­ry of good over evil,” refers to the light of high­er knowl­edge dis­pelling all ig­no­rance. The ig­no­rance that masks one’s true na­ture, not as the body, but as the un­chang­ing, in­fi­nite, im­ma­nent and tran­scen­dent re­al­i­ty. With this awak­en­ing comes com­pas­sion and the aware­ness of the one­ness of all things (high­er knowl­edge).