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Indians celebrate Diwali, where earthen lamps and dazzling lights illuminate houses and streets across the country in honor of the Hindu festival that symbolizes the triumph of light over darkness.
Diwali is a national holiday in India, usually celebrated by socializing and exchanging gifts with family and friends.
As part of the festivities, many light earthen oil lamps or candles and fireworks are lit.
At night, special prayers are held for the Hindu goddess Lakshmi, who is believed to bring good luck and prosperity.
Towns and cities across the country are adorned with colorful lights ahead of the festivities.
Millions of Indians flocked to crowded bazaars to shop, bringing back Diwali cheers that have been stifled by coronavirus restrictions for the past two years. The market is full of eager shoppers buying flowers, lanterns and candles to decorate homes and offices.
More than 1.5 million earthen lamps were lit and burned for 45 minutes on the banks of the River Saryu in the northern city of Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, at dusk on Sunday, holding a Guinness World Record set last year.
Senior government official Nitish Kumar said more than 22,000 volunteers, most of them university students, ensured the lights burned within the stipulated time to break last year’s record of 900,000 oil lamps.
Hindus believe that Lord Ram was born in Ayodhya and returned to Ayodhya after 14 years of exile. To celebrate his return, people lit earth lamps.
Before the event, the holy city was filled with fairy lights, with laser and firework displays illuminating its alleys and river banks. Thousands of residents also lighted houses and temples across the city.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended the breathtaking spectacle along the Salyu River. To the chanting of Hindu religious hymns, Mr Modi lit an earthen lamp and performed an “aarti” – a traditional Hindu ritual that involves waving lit lamps in front of idols.
Earlier, he prayed at the long-awaited temple of the Hindu god Ram on the ruins of a demolished 16th-century Babri mosque in Ayodhya.
The Babri Masjid mosque was destroyed in December 1992 by Hindu mobs with picks and crowbars, sparking massive Hindu-Muslim violence that killed around 2,000 people, most of them Muslim.
A Supreme Court decision in 2019 allowed the construction of a temple to replace the demolished mosque.
This is Mr Modi’s second visit to the temple since he laid the groundwork for its construction in 2020. Mr Modi and his party have long promised to build a temple in Ram, where the Mughal-era mosque once stood, but it has long been controversial.
“Lord Ram’s vision is a beacon for those who aspire to be a developed India in the next 25 years,” Mr Modi said in his speech.
Over the past few years, Diwali celebrations have been marked by concerns about air pollution, which is often shrouded in toxic grey smog as temperatures drop and winter sets in.
Pollution problems at the start of winter in northern India stem primarily from vehicle emissions and the burning of crop residues to clear farmland. But on Diwali night, people also use firecrackers to light up the sky, and its smoke causes smoke that sometimes takes days to clear.
Some Indian states, including the capital New Delhi, have banned the sale of fireworks and imposed other restrictions to curb pollution. Authorities have also urged residents to light “green firecrackers” that emit less pollutants than regular firecrackers, but similar bans have often been flouted in the past.
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