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What Diwali’s own traditions can teach us about clean air
With this year’s Diwali celebrations now over, that observation deserves attention beyond the festival itself.
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On November 6, while hearing the recurring air pollution crisis in Delhi-NCR, the Supreme Court made an important observation: Restrictions and repeated judicial orders alone would not solve the problem. Lasting change, it emphasised, requires public awareness, behavioural change and community participation. It also called for Diwali celebrations to become a people’s movement towards greater environmental responsibility.
With this year’s Diwali celebrations now over, that observation deserves attention beyond the festival itself. Awareness cannot remain confined to courtrooms, regulations or annual warnings. It has to enter everyday culture and influence the choices we make. Perhaps the answer to the Court’s call lies not merely in telling people what to stop doing, but in reminding them what their own traditions have always stood for.
There is something wonderfully simple about a traditional Diwali diya: A small flame, a cotton wick, a little oil, and light placed at the entrance of a home. For generations, millions of such lamps have transformed Indian evenings. Their purpose was straightforward, to bring light into our homes.
Somewhere along the way, however, we began confusing more noise and smoke with more celebration.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the annual debate over Diwali pollution is that we may be looking outside the festival for an argument that already exists within it.
The wider Diwali season offers a remarkable map of the values that have traditionally shaped a good life. Dhanvantari Trayodashi invokes Dhanvantari and the traditional idea of health and healing. Lakshmi puja follows, celebrating wealth and prosperity.
The sequence is worth pausing over: Health before wealth, and healing as a foundation for prosperity.
The cultural journey extends further. Vasubaras places cattle at the centre of gratitude, recognising their contribution to agriculture and human life. Govardhan Puja celebrates the land, food and natural systems that sustain us. Bhai Dooj honours family bonds and care. Chhath, part of the wider festive season, turns our attention towards the sun, water and the elemental forces upon which life depends.
Look at this cultural architecture: Health and healing, wealth and prosperity, family and bonding, animals and shared life, land, food and nature.
These traditions reflect an understanding that human wellbeing is not entirely separate from the wellbeing of families, animals, communities and the natural world. Today, we may use words such as sustainability and ecological interdependence to describe these relationships. Our cultural traditions expressed them in their own language.
And this is where the cultural argument becomes more than symbolism. A festival that places health alongside prosperity, honours animals and acknowledges our dependence on nature should also make us conscious of what our celebrations do to them. The values we invoke in our rituals can also guide the choices we make outside them.
A diya lights a corner of your home. Smoke does not respect the boundaries of your home. It travels into neighbouring apartments, schools, hospitals and lungs. The person setting off a firecracker may enjoy a few seconds of spectacle, but its pollution becomes everyone else’s burden.
The person who creates pollution does not get to choose who breathes it.
A child with asthma inhales it. An elderly person with a heart condition bears its consequences. Someone cycling to work the next morning breathes the residue of the festivities. Firecrackers release fine particulate matter and gases. These particles can penetrate deep into the respiratory system, contributing to inflammation and cardiovascular stress. In cities already burdened by traffic emissions, construction dust and industrial pollution, festive emissions add another layer to an atmosphere struggling to recover.
This is an environmental transaction: We release something into the shared air, but we do not control where it travels or whose body eventually bears its cost. The heart and lungs do not celebrate festivals according to the calendar. They respond to the air we breathe.
And humans are not the only ones breathing it. Pets, cattle, birds and urban wildlife share the same atmosphere. Sudden explosions and sustained high-decibel noise can frighten and disorient animals. Smoke can affect their respiratory systems too. Here lies one of the festival’s most striking contradictions: We ritually acknowledge our relationship with animals and nature while sometimes remaining indifferent to the physical consequences of our celebrations for them.
Consumer culture has quietly encouraged us to make every festival louder, brighter and bigger than the last. But perhaps the more meaningful question is not whether we should celebrate, but whether we can celebrate magnificently without making someone else pay for it.
We often treat environmental health and human health as separate conversations. One belongs to environmentalists and policymakers; the other to doctors and hospitals. But the boundary between the environment and the human body is far thinner than we imagine. The air outside eventually becomes the air inside us.
Perhaps the most respectful way to protect a tradition is not to preserve every modern habit attached to it, but to preserve the principle at its heart.
So, let the diyas glow. Let homes shine. Let families gather, children experience wonder and communities celebrate abundance. Let there be sweets, laughter, generosity and the familiar warmth of coming together. But let us also remember the child sleeping next door, the elderly person struggling to breathe, and the animals and birds sharing our cities. They may not have chosen how we celebrate, but they still live with its consequences.
Individual restraint matters, but responsibility cannot rest on individuals alone. The Supreme Court’s call for a people’s movement points to the need for public awareness to translate into collective action. Local representatives, neighbourhood groups, schools and community organisations can help make environmental awareness part of how festivals are planned and celebrated. Sensible enforcement of pollution and noise regulations, safer alternatives and responsible community participation must work together.
Regulations can restrict behaviour; awareness helps people understand why change matters. But lasting change is more likely when environmental responsibility becomes an expression of cultural values, not merely compliance with court orders. That is where Diwali’s own traditions have a role to play. They remind us that prosperity is inseparable from health, that human wellbeing is connected to animals and nature, and that celebration carries responsibilities beyond the individual.
The festival may be over for this year. The opportunity to rediscover its deeper wisdom is not. If awareness becomes part of our cultural habits, perhaps the next celebration will not need another cycle of warnings and restrictions to remind us what is at stake.
Diwali celebrates the triumph of light over darkness. Perhaps one darkness we must overcome today is the assumption that the consequences of our celebrations end with us.
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is authored by Vijay Kanuru, clinical nanomedicine researcher, entrepreneur in residence, Massachusetts Venture Development Center, Boston and founder, Nanoved Research Foundation.
