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, the vice president of student life, said changing the name of ICA’s celebration helps to avoid confusion. He said the event itself was great and was 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.”

This is the third year the ICA organization has hosted this event to celebrate Indian culture. ICA officers reached out to Dr. Phil Schubert to invite him to the event this year, and that’s when the name change issue was brought up.

President of the ICA, Alin Geevarghese Anil said the goal of the event is to showcase Indian culture, and it is not religious to Hinduism in any way. He said many people in India celebrate Diwali even if they are not Hindu.

“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.”

Vice President of ICA, Jenny Emmanuel, 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 since gold is popular in India and the color of lights, which was meant to represent Diwali’s festival of lights. However, ICA officers complained that Golden Gala has no Indian roots in the name.

ICA officers 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 backlash on the parent forum last year about their spring event Holi. During this event Indian culture is represented by throwing colored powder, serving food, and listening to Indian music. 

Neither of these events contained any practices of Hinduism, but instead are 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 members of ACU’s 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 but also wants to retain ACU’s mission and values.

“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.