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Why Diwali Was Never About Religion - FutureIQ

6,565 views Wait, is this logic right? • Oct 17, 2025
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Slog Reference: When did Diwali become Chinese

Description

Every year, millions of lamps light up the night sky for Diwali but where did this celebration truly begin? Long before it became about fireworks and online sales, Diwali was a harvest festival, a time when farmers finally defeated the monsoon, roads reopened, and life could be celebrated again. Lamps were lit not for beauty, but for purpose, to guide travellers, mark open shops, and bring light to the darkest new moon night.

Over time, religion added its genius marketing. Rama’s return, Krishna’s victory, Mahavira’s nirvana, weaving divine meaning into a festival people were already celebrating. Then came the Mughals, who turned it into Jashn-e-Chiraghan, the Festival of Lamps, adding Chinese firecrackers and royal grandeur.

Today, as we move away from smoke and back to light, Diwali is returning to its roots. A reminder of renewal, gratitude, and human endurance.
This Future IQ episode reveals how a simple harvest ritual evolved into the world’s brightest festival and why its real light has always been human resilience.

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The Dirty Tricks Behind Amazon & Flipkart Sale: https://youtu.be/FpCe0KAYLrY

📖 References:
Nilaamata Purana: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NilamataPurana
Firecrackers in India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FirecrackersinIndia
History of firecrackers in India: https://indianexpress.com/article/research/a-crackling-history-of-fireworks-in-india-4890178/
History of Sivakasi https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/two-men-made-sivakasi-a-fireworks-hub/articleshow/6471038.cms

🐦 Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS

00:00 Why do we celebrate?
00:34 Future IQ WhatsApp Community
01:02 Traditions tied to agriculture
03:10 Harvest means celebration
03:44 Consumerism / Marketeers Taking Over
05:27 Is this about religion?
06:52 Various religious significances
08:44 Practical reasons: darkest night
09:37 Renewal of home fire
11:37 Keeping embers burning
13:19 Connection to Diwali cleaning
13:47 Crop burning: modern invention
17:31 Firecrackers: Chinese invention
19:42 Mughals and firecracker celebrations
20:56 How firecrackers became closely associated with Diwali
23:09 Evolution of Diwali
24:35 Diwali sales and outro

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When did Diwali become Chinese

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Transcript

Shriant, have you ever wondered how did Diwali start? When did Diwali become Chinese? Chinese firecrackers? Oh, in that sense, yeah, I haven't wondered that. But I have wondered why as in why did Diwali have to become Chinese in the sense why did it have to become a festival of sound? No, more importantly at least for me is just where did it come from? Why do we celebrate Diwali? Right. So here this episode we are going to talk about the origins right because we like looking at first principles.
Very interesting. But before we go on to that I have a bit of good news for the people watching. We have started a future IQ WhatsApp community and everybody's absolutely welcome to join. We are putting up a QR code on the screen in front of you right now. Scan it. We'll also put a link in the description for you to join the community. So please do join because then you get to pester Naven the way I do pester him for questions and for answers. So drop in your questions answers there. We'll see you there. But coming back to the topic at hand.
Yeah. Why or when did Diwali start? See all ancient traditions are usually connected to agriculture. Okay. Because until the 1700 roughly before 1700 90% of the world was involved engaged in agriculture. True. Okay. True. So pretty much the whole world everybody's world revolved around agriculture. Right. And the most important part of agriculture is harvest. Okay. Yes. So when you have just finished harvesting your land, it is a time of celebration, right? Basically you have just won the final match against nature right against the weather. Yeah.
You have won, you have succeeded, right? You have reached across the finish line. Big celebration. Okay. Interesting way to put it. Yes. Another reason for celebrating is that you have just finished a period of long very hard work. Yeah. Right. Like backbreaking work and now it is done. You can relax. Yes. Right. Like just finished the exam. You don't care whether you passed or not, but you want to celebrate, right? That's the second reason. Okay. Third reason to celebrate is that now you can spend time with family.
Otherwise, you were in the fields from dawn till dusk. Dusk. Okay. Another reason is that it marks basically a clear separation between two different periods, right? One was you finished on harvest. Now you're going to chill for a while and then the next year starts, right? So that's the time when you redo the books of accounts and you restart everything, clean up things and so on, right? Yeah. It's a very clear boundary between the year that ended and the year that's about to end. So it's, you know, perfect time to do new financial year, close books of accounts, open new books of accounts, uh just renewal of everything, right?
Yeah. This again we're talking about the 1700s perspective. Yeah. And well, we are talking about way before that. Yeah. 1 th000 BC, right? Because the world before 1700 for like 5,000 years, the world was more or less the same, right? The most important reason for celebrating after the harvest is that now you're flush with cash. You're rich. You have money to spend. Yeah. Right. So that is why you will see that a lot of traditions around Diwali are about buying stuff, new clothes, jewelry, right? Gifts. So Yeah. Yeah, essentially. But hold on. Uh I thought these traditions that you talked about, new clothes, jewelry and purchasing, these are all new consumerrist traditions that we imported
because of capitalism. Oh, you mean like you know malls and America and capitalism and evil capitalists trying to evil marketers which we have talked about in previous episodes. Nope. No. Okay. The nilamat puran around from 4th to 8th century. So you know 1500 years ago it said that after the harvest you should decorate shops illuminate crossings and market areas and you know so that when the traveling resumes fairs resume people will come uh and you should have your shops open commerce hospitality right this is a practical reason why you should have lamps everywhere and that is the reason for the festival of lamps Okay. So everything you know you you see malls are being lit up and being
welcoming that started 2,000 years ago for the same reasons. Okay. Deepawali the festival of light the festival of lamps as you said that's where it comes from because harvest is over. People are flushed with cash also. They have time now right because the important stuff is done. The roads have dried up so they can travel. Right. So this is the time of meas this is the time of commerce. People are intermingling. Everybody is trading and buying from each other. So at that time remember that this is the time when there were no street lights. Yeah.
Right. There there was no electricity. So if you want to welcome people coming into your village to buy things from you, put lamps on the sides of the streets and outside your houses. And of course you should have shops open and you should have wares open and you should have a me. Yeah. But isn't this entire period the Navaratri Dasra Diwali period about celebrating Ram's victory over Rahan? Okay. So what you are trying to say is that this is not a marketing gimmick but this is about Ram and Rahan.
Yeah. It has religious connotations. You know who the greatest marketers in the world are? Uh religions. Okay. Excuse me. This is SEO at its finest, right? You know that around this time people are going to celebrate no matter what because they've just finished a harvest for all those reasons that I said there is going to be a celebration. If you want your religion to become popular attach religious significance to something that people are already celebrating and this is not an Indian thing right Christmas was had nothing to do with Jesus. Okay. Uh I mean it was a pagan festival. That whole red guy, where did it come from? There was nothing in the Bible about Santa Claus, right? The
Christians just attached birth of Jesus to it and they made it Christmas. Yeah. Santa Claus actually be being red is is an invention of Coke. Oh, pink and whatnot. And before that there was a Santa Claus. He wasn't red. You're right. Absolutely. Another great marketing trick, right? But before that there was a Santa Claus. St. nothing to do with Christmas but the Christians attached it and now look at where we are right so same thing we do right that there is going to be the celebration so what we do is some people attach Ram defeated Rahan other people attach Krishna defeated Narasur okay okay uh Mahavir attained Nirvana around this time okay right the Sikhs celebrate Bandhi Das okay I
mean Bandich where you know Guru Harmabin Singh escaped or got out of captivity captivity right that actually happened a little earlier and then he came and he celebrated Diwali with his folks right so they don't celebrate Bandichur when he got out they celebrate it when there is a celebration right so see this is I think good this is a good thing you do want people to be religious so whatever debauchery is going to happen out of celebration You when you attach religion to it, it improves. It becomes nicer.
Wait, what? How? How does debauchery improve by attaching it to religion? Then you feel guilty about doing the debossery. then your celebration is a little you know toned down because see again from 2,000 years ago or well at least 1500 years ago we have evidence that gambling was you know socially acceptable after Diwali during this period of celebration right not just this period I think it was socially acceptable in a lot of other contexts also there is an entire epic we have called Mahabharat which starts with gambling as the the the story starts starts with a uh dice game.
Yeah. Also the main point of that part of the story is that you shouldn't gamble. Yes. Of course. Whereas around Diwali, it is expected that you will gamble. Okay. Fair. But see there are practical reasons why there should be a festival of lights around this time. I mean I get the harvest part but practical reasons like what? So well the simple thing is that around this time the amosia amosia right it's the darkest night of the month okay uh I mean there is no natural light other than stars correct so to put up lights on that day makes a lot of sense right absolutely in fact in Kashmir which is where some of this evidence comes from the nilamat puran
uh this marks like you know for the next many months you are encouraged wish to keep the lights on because it is the winter right there. The winter is much stronger and much worse, right? So both for light and warmth and heat. Yeah, I was this is when you start that process because now this is sort of the start of uh winter, right? Okay. And this for other people was also the time for renewal of the home fire, right? Why is that such a big deal? I mean uh fires were everywhere. So you could well see there was this very important concept of home fire which had which was sacred okay which was important and
there were a whole bunch of rituals set up around it right so because first of all fire was I mean when you say fire was everywhere it is very different from what it is today okay today what you do is you go to your kitchen and you turn something and you do this with your lighter and fire starts no I'm not saying that I'm saying there were lamps all over the place right so you could always get a fire from one of the lamps if the fire in the home went out.
No. So, keep in mind that lamps which burnt ghee or oil or something like that, that was significantly more expensive than burning wood. True. Okay. So, you didn't have lamps on all the time. Fair. Lamps you would let up for a little time and then you turn them off when they're no longer needed. Right. But then tomorrow when you need them again, how do you light them again? There were no matches, right? Yeah. So the only way to start a fire was the the you know things that are shown in documentaries like hitting rocks against each other or you know rubbing wood. So in India it was rubbing wood. There were like elaborate traditions against oh you
should use this wood because this is pure and this is the best wood and so on and to prevent having to do that. I mean it is painful to start a fire using that right? So to prevent that, the idea was that you should have one fire burning in your home at all times. Makes sense. I mean it it just makes sense from the practical perspective of it. I mean my question when I started researching it was really a fire burning all the time. You put a wood in there and you're continuously adding wood that seems like too much of a waste. But they were smarter than that. They didn't do that, right? What they did was during
the dayh it wouldn't be burning with a flame. It would just be embers, red embers, and it wouldn't be primarily wood. It would be wood, but they would put a bunch of rice husk. So, rice husk just burns much more slowly. It will glow, but there won't be a flame. So, that by the time evening comes around, there is still that glow and uh heat and enough. And then if you now put in a little bit of oil and you bring in kindling and so on and you blow on it, you will get a flame. Oh, you can use that to light your lamps and your other things. You can do your cooking, right? So, there were rituals
around keeping that glow, that embers burning throughout the day and then in the morning you actually have a flame and in the evening you actually have a flame and around that rituals built up and this is the right way to do it and so on. Is this the flame that gets renewed and this is the flame that gets renewed? The idea being that if this is just continuously in use, all kinds of junk and gunk builds up there, right? What you do want to do is you don't want that building up forever.
Correct. So once a year, what you want to just clean out everything and start a fresh, right? By start a fresh as in clean that entire area, apply cowang on it once again and a whole bunch of there's a list. I'm not going to go through it, but you do this this this and do your puja and you create that flavor. They basically converted into a ritual to make sure that it got done correctly in a way that would actually survive and sustain for a long period of time.
Right. So that is why the and this actually also brings to mind the concept of Diwali cleaning in my head. Exactly. This was this was the whole point as in this is the right time to do it because it's the time between you know previous year is over next year is starting and there is a break right and so in that break you basically clean house you basically pretty up everything and then you enjoy for whatever amount of time that you have before the next cycle starts but uh going back to the burning thing uh does this also connect to the crop burning that happens around Diwali yeah that's a question I had but turns
out that it has nothing to do with Diwali or crop burning. Really? Crop burning is not like an ancient tradition of our farmers. Crop burning started in the 1980s that that that recent. Yes. Basically what happened was that you know in the 1960s onwards we had the green revolution. Yeah. Where we significantly improved the productivity of our farms. We did two things at that point. Right? Mainly say north India right Punjab etc where some of these traditions started the two crops were wheat and rice in the old days what would happen is that when you harvested them you would cut all the way to the bottom and then the stock of the wheat or the rice that
is taken and it is used as foder for the cows. Correct. Side note, by the way, my thumb got cut off in a machine for chopping that foder. Okay, he wasn't chopping fodder there. By the way, there's an entire Twitter thread is written about it. We'll link it in the description. Unfortunately, I chopped my thumb instead of the foder. But so, here is the point, right? If there was crop burning, we wouldn't have this problem. You know why? Because after the green revolution, we used different varieties of wheat and rice where the stocks were shorter. Huh.
So they are no longer as useful as fodder. Part one. Correct. Part two is that we started using more mechanized harvesters. So those have a machine which does the cutting. Those machines are not chopping it off cleanly and then doing that. They're just leaving a whole bunch of pieces right there on the ground. And those need to be cleaned up before the next sewing. And because there are all these little pieces down there that are just extremely difficult to clean up, right? The third reason why this just got much worse in the 1980s is that the government of Punjab passed a new act.
Oh, by the way, as part of this green revolution, what people started doing is planting two different crops in the same field. You finished rice, you harvested rice around Diwali time and then you planted wheat, you know, karif and rai crops. Okay. So in the same field because you have to plant wheat quickly, you have to clean it up quickly. Correct. And because now you're using harvesters, there are little pieces there. Okay. And especially because the short stocks are shorter, it's much more difficult to collect them.
Okay. Then Punjab government passes an act which is basically the water table related act saying that to preserve water table water they said that you should start planting the rice a little later in the year. Right? So when that happened now the time of rice harvest got pushed whereas the time of wheat harvest stays because there is that moisture thing you have to do it in that time. So the gap between rice and wheat became much less. So to handle all of these problems farmers came up with one solution which is burn it off.
Okay, that is wow there is oh I so now in north India Diwali is seems to be associated with crop burning because of the whole pollution problem but it's a modern invention right it's a very modern invention and there are so many factors that went into it that we didn't even consider that might be the cause okay that explains the crop burning that explains the lights but what explains the sound as in when did Diwali become a festival festival of sound and explosions instead of being the nice festival of light light that you've just described it to be.
Yeah. Like I mean my my clickbait uh phrase for that being when did Diwali become Chinese, right? Because of course in Vic times there is no mention of firecrackers, right? It is the festival of lights. It was all about lamps uh and fires, right? And firecrackers are Chinese. So that explains the Chinese connection at least. Correct. Yeah. I mean, see, firecrackers, funnily enough, were invented in 200 BC. Okay? At that time, it was just a bamboo. If you heated it up enough, it would explode, right?
That's why the word for firecracker in Chinese means bamboo. Bamboo explosion. Okay. Um, so but for like a,00500 years, they were just heating up bamboo and making them explode. Okay. Then when gunpowder was invented around 1100s, right, that they became real firecrackers with the big explosions, right? The Mongols who picked it up from the Chinese. Mongolia is right next to China. Then the Mongol herds going all around Europe and all that. They came all the way till India. They bought firecrackers to India. Right? So in the 1200s there is evidence of firecrackers being used by I mean those the Mongolian uh people who rulers who were ruling some parts of north India at different times right that in
their palace celebrations there are descriptions of firecrackers right ah uh this and this includes one Gujarati wedding also uh wait what? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, of course, see, if a ruler is going to do something, the regular people for them, it becomes a matter of traditional thing. It becomes a matter of status. See, I can do things which the ruler can do. It's like I can do things which Amanis can do that way, right? Yeah. I can drink water which Amanis can do. Really went a notch up with the Mughals, right? Mughals are now like 1500s undisputed rulers of large chunks of India.
All other little rulers all over are you know just vassels of the mules subservient to them and Mughals used to have firecrackers as part of all their celebrations. Now one of the things any ruler does is remember the SEO part right they have to attach themselves to things that the people are already celebrating. So the Mughal rulers are celebrating Jashna Chiraa and so people have started associating firecrackers with at least big ruler level celebrations of Diwali. Okay. And some rich people are doing it because they want to show they are as rich as the rulers.
Right. Of course. Interesting thing happened in 1890s. Okay. One guy in Kolkata set up a factory to manufacture matches and then along with that some gunpowder. Okay. Okay. By this time, India was making gunpowder locally. We had figured out enough local replacements for all the components that go into gunpowder including salt peter which India is like one of the big sources of. Okay. Okay. So this factory got set up in Kolkata in 1890s. Then two brothers from South India came here in 1920 to learn how to make matches.
Okay. 3 years later after having learned how to make matches they went back home. H and would you like to know where home is? I think I know because the moment you said matches and gunpowder the word that popped into my head was Shivkashi. Correct. So these brothers were from Sukkashi. They went back to Sivkashi and they set up a match factory there. Right. And soon they also started making some firecrackers there. Okay. Okay. So now some more firecrackers are getting manufactured. Still a rich people's thing right now. What happens around World War II is that first of all um because of the war import of gunpowder goes away.
Correct. Right. Plus the British put like rules in place for how to handle gunpowder and how to manufacture it and so on. Right. Now as soon as there are rules two things happen. One is that random people doing things goes away. But because now there are rules, you are sure that if you follow the rules, government is okay with it. You get permission. So suddenly from one factory, we ended up with three factories. Now there are it from being like a one thing making firecrackers, it has become an industry.
Right. Right. And of course slowly that made the firecrackers cheaper and cheaper and cheaper and of course people started copying the rich people and their rulers and everybody started doing firecrackers. Right. So I mean we went from one factory in 1923 to three factories in 1942ish something to 169 in 1980s to 60 and something in 2010. Okay. Yeah. But that is basically how Chinese invention firecrackers became so closely associated with our festival of lights which is a celebration of harvest. Wow. What a journey going from the festival of lights to the festival of explosions and sound. But it makes absolute sense that because an industry developed it found customers in that regard.
Yeah. Which is very very fascinating when you think about it because you don't think about Diwali as a festival of sound but then it has become so now there is a counter signaling happening because Diwali started this festival of sound started as a way to signal your status. Correct. No. So I mean just think of the sequence right. It started as a harvest celebration which got converted to a festival of lights because we want to sell things. Correct. Right. Which got converted to which got attached with religious significance by religious marketers. Then it got converted to firecracker celebration by Mughal kings who brought it from outside which got converted to firecracker celebrations by middle class because suddenly something
kings could do the middle class could afford. But now because like you said because of environmental uh concerns we are slowly again removing the firecrackers and taking Diwali back to our roots which is that it's a festival of lights and commerce right taking Diwali back to roots sounds so weirdly um uh never mind you know what I mean but I'm not going to say it out loud but yeah it makes sense that we need to take Diwali back to where it began. Make Diwali great again.
Buy stuff. Buy stuff in big online sales. Oh, because consumerism is why Diwali started in the first place. Also because we have an episode on this which we want you to watch and then you send it to your friends so that our views increase. Yeah, the episode is actually about how to shop smartly during big online sales. So if you are actually planning to buy something in the Diwali sales that are happening on multiple e-commerce platforms, please watch this episode that we are lining up for you next. You will thank us. Believe me, you will thank us.
And we are always up for thanks. So if you want to thank us personally, then we have a WhatsApp community where you can do that. We'll put up the QR code on screen for you and the link in description. Do join us. We'd love to talk to you there as well as here as we always do every week uh every weekend every Friday. Uh Shriant Naven future IQ. Yeah.