Diwali goes abroad: Festival of lights increasingly celebrated outside India

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00:00Time now for our entre-news segment, and today we're going to learn a little more about the Festival of Lights.

00:04Diwali is celebrated in India and is starting to gain popularity around the world.

00:09And to talk more about this, let's bring in our very own Delano D'Souza.

00:12Delano, let's start at the beginning. What exactly is Diwali?

00:15Hi, Jeannie, good to see you.

00:16Well, Diwali is a festival that celebrates essentially the triumph of good over evil, knowledge over ignorance.

00:22It's a holiday that's popular amongst Hindus over in India, but is celebrated across religious lines.

00:27So Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, everyone celebrates Diwali.

00:32But like everything in India, there is a divide between the North and the South over how it is celebrated or even what it is called.

00:39But what is common in India is you have a lot of these little lights called diyas that are lit and they're pretty much everywhere.

00:45Now, there's also this belief that if you gamble during Diwali, you will be prosperous for the next year.

00:51But I don't know how true this is. I did gamble last year.

00:53Wasn't very prosperous. Maybe that was because I got wiped out.

00:56Now, over the years, there has been this effort to to clean up Diwali, if you will,

01:00and crack down on the lighting of firecrackers, which leads to both air and noise pollution.

01:06So this time around, we had several Indian states who are trying to get ahead of the problem, including Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and Tamil Nadu.

01:13And they've taken measures to essentially ban the production, the sale and the use of firecrackers.

01:18But of course, it remains to be seen if those bans are in fact observed and if violators are in fact punished.

01:25Now, Diwali is a public holiday in India, but not just in India.

01:28We have Diwali as a holiday in places like Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, anywhere that there's a large Hindu population.

01:37And are we now seeing this this globalization occurring in other places around the world?

01:41More and more so. In fact, this year we have the public school system in New York that's going to have two days off for Diwali.

01:48This week alone, we had the governor of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania who signed a bill recognizing Diwali as a state holiday.

01:55So it's definitely gaining popularity over in the United States.

01:58Let's not forget the vice president, Kamala Harris.

02:00Her mother was from India and she has celebrated Diwali in the White House.

02:05And maybe that's a tradition. If she does win the presidency, she may continue as president of the United States.

02:11Now, the reason we are seeing Diwali take on this international dimension is simply because of the Indian diaspora being so widespread.

02:19In the United States, for instance, we have heads of Fortune 500 companies who are of Indian origin.

02:26For instance, Alphabet, Microsoft, Adobe.

02:29These are just some companies that have Indian heads.

02:32In the past, Indians would be more personal about how they celebrated their holidays.

02:36But things have started to change in recent years.

02:40We have big celebrations taking place in New York attended by the likes of Padma Lakshmi, Mindy Kaling, well-known Indian-Americans.

02:47This past weekend over in London, in fact, we had Condé Nast Traveler who held its third installment of its Diwali celebrations,

02:56which it co-hosted with French luxury jeweler Cartier.

03:00Now, I reached out to the global editorial director Divya Tani and asked her why a magazine would want to celebrate Diwali.

03:06And she told me when she first arrived in London, she didn't feel that the Diwali celebrations which existed

03:12matched the power and the influence of the Indian community in the UK.

03:16So essentially, she decided to go ahead and start her own.

03:19She contacted Anna Wintour, who told her just run with it.

03:22And she decided to partner with brands which have a long history with India.

03:26So this is why Cartier jumped into the picture.

03:29She told me something interesting. She said that a lot of luxury brands are looking at India in a positive way.

03:34The smart ones recognize the power of the Indian diaspora.

03:38And it's funny that she said that because just a couple of days ago,

03:40we had French shoemaker Christian Louboutin who unveiled a collection called the Diwali Edit.

03:47Now, while this line faced a lot of criticism on social media,

03:51it's just an acknowledgement that global brands need to adapt when targeting the Indian consumer,

03:57whether they are based in India or overseas.

04:00And the toymaker Mattel is even getting in on the action.

04:02That's right. The creator of Barbie unveiled the first Diwali Barbie.

04:06Now, this isn't the first time Mattel has unveiled an Indian type of Barbie.

04:10But in the past, it all has been criticized for things like the skin color, for instance.

04:15This time around, Mattel teamed up with Indian fashion designer Anita Dongre.

04:20The process to create Diwali Barbie lasted about 12 to 18 months.

04:25There was a lot of back and forth over what the Barbie was going to wear, the shoes, the jewelry, etc.

04:32I, in fact, interviewed Anita Dongre for Access Asia this week.

04:36And I asked her about the design process.

04:39And she also told me why she decided not to dress Barbie in a sari. Take a listen.

04:44I wanted to do something contemporary.

04:46I wanted to show to the world that Indian fashion is not just the sari, that it's more than the sari.

04:53And I wanted the design to resonate with young girls all over the world, especially Indians.

05:01It was definitely important for me to make sure that she had the skin tone of the average Indian girl.

05:08And all the feedback that we received from all over the world, such emotional feedback,

05:13saying that finally, like mothers have written to me, sent voice notes to me,

05:16saying that I can finally gift my daughter a doll, a doll that she can relate to,

05:21a doll that looks like her, a doll that has skin color like her.

05:25So that was Anita Dongre speaking to me on Access Asia,

05:28about how she was involved in the process to create Diwali Barbie.

05:33For now, Diwali here in Paris is more amongst the diaspora at home.

05:38It's not really taking on the global dimensions we're seeing in places like London and New York.

05:43But there are members of the community here who want to change that.

05:47In any case, it sounds like a lot of fun. Thank you for telling us all about it.

05:50That's Friends24's Delana D'Souza.

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