The Indian Culture Association’s annual Diwali event was renamed this year to the Golden Gala because Diwali is derivative of a Hindu festival.
Dr. Ryan Richardson, vice president of student life, said changing the name of ICA’s celebration helps to avoid confusion. He said the event was great and not antithetical to ACU’s Christian witness.
“We want to be an overtly Christian University,” Richardson said. “The name is confusing because it is derivative of a Hindu festival. We had to distance ourselves from anything that is overtly non-Christian.”
In India, Diwali is celebrated for over five days with festivals, fireworks, feasts and prayer. It is a major religious holiday for Hindus and is celebrated by other religions, as well. Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs have their own Diwali stories, with the underlying theme of light over darkness and knowledge over ignorance. Diwali is connected to the story of King Rama’s return to Ayodhya after he defeated Ravana, and is widely associated with several other Hindu deities.
This is the third year the ICA organization has hosted this event to celebrate Indian culture. ICA officers contacted Dr. Phil Schubert to invite him to the event this year, and that’s when the name change issue was brought up.
Alin Geevarghese Anil, president of the ICA, said the event’s goal is to showcase Indian culture, and it is not religious to Hinduism in any way.
At ICA’s Golden Gala, Indian culture is celebrated through food, dance and henna tattoos. To represent the festival of lights, sparklers are offered to participants. This year, over 250 people attended the Golden Gala in mid-November to support the ICA.
“The reason why we called it Diwali is because it falls around the same time,” said Geevarghese Anil, junior informational systems major from Garland. “Diwali falls under our culture, so that’s how we tie the Indian culture to the event.”
Jenny Emmanuel, vice president of ICA, said there is a large Indian community in Abilene and the event was not just geared to students but the whole community. She said when you take away the word Diwali, the entire cultural aspect of the event is being removed.
The name “Golden Gala” was chosen because gold is a popular color in India and is the color of lights, which was meant to represent Diwali’s festival of lights. However, ICA officers expressed frustration that the name “Golden Gala” has no Indian roots.
ICA officers say they were informed that the name needed to be changed two weeks before the actual event after they had already released their marketing and created their website.
“And so, we got a lot of backlash,” said Emmanuel, senior psychology major from Manor. “We were getting a lot of emails. Oh, you need to remove this. You need to remove this. Because it says the word Diwali.”
ICA also received criticism last year on a university-focused Facebook forum related to their spring event Holi. During this event Indian culture is represented by throwing colored powder, serving food, and listening to Indian music.
Wikipedia describes Holi as “a popular and significant Hindu festival celebrated as the Festival of Colors, Love, and Spring. It celebrates the eternal and divine love of the deities Radha and Krishna. Additionally, the day signifies the triumph of good over evil, as it commemorates the victory of Vishnu as Narasimha over Hiranyakashipu.”
Organizers said despite ties of Diwali and Holi to Hindu gods, neither of the on-campus events have contained any practices of Hinduism but instead have been meant to be a way to make Indian students feel welcomed and encourage cultural diversity.
“Holi for example doesn’t have ties to Hinduism. Yes, Hindus celebrate it and if you look up the definition it’ll say it’s a Hindu festival but again everyone in India celebrates it,” Emmanuel said.”There’s a large population of Christians and Muslims in India, but everyone celebrates it.”
Richardson said the administration collaborated with ICA officers to change the name to something that honors Indian culture and reflects ACU’s Christian mission.
However, the officers of ICA felt the decision to have the name be changed was already made.
“So we kind of had to, but for Holi we want them to be more open to that discussion,” Emmanuel said.
The Office of Student Life wants to continue to encourage and embrace cultural diversity on campus while retaining ACU’s mission and values, Richardson said.
“It’s very important that we allow people to see that God is creative and that God created all of us in His image, regardless of nation, culture, creed, and they’re helping illustrate that, and I’m proud of them for that,” Richardson said.
