Every year, Diwali — from the Sanskrit Deepavali, meaning “a row of lights” — arrives as a festival of radiance, reflection, and renewal. It’s intended to be a time when lamps glow against darkness, symbolising peace over pride and wisdom over warfare.
Yet this year, even the festival of light could not escape the long shadows of politics. And the Indian Prime Minister remained stuck with his anti-Pakistan narrative, as if he could not get anything else to cheer his soldiers on a religious festival that traditionally projects co-existence over antagonism.
Marking Diwali aboard the Indian Navy’s flagship, INS Vikrant, Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose to celebrate not just illumination but intimidation. “Even hearing the name Vikrant,” he told sailors, “Is enough for Pakistan to have sleepless nights.”
The remark, broadcast with cinematic precision across Indian media, drew applause from supporters — and a raised eyebrow from those who remembered what Diwali stands for, even within the Hindu community living anywhere in the world.
The festival’s message of inner calm and harmony seemed to collide with rhetoric meant to stir adrenaline. Some Indians were thankful to Modi that he stopped short of defending or denying the downing of the Indian jets by Pakistan’s air defense, an occurrence echoed by the US President Donald Trump in his repeated credit-bagging claim of preventing a full-length war between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.
In Indian political culture, the stage of celebration often doubles as a pulpit of power. But using a holy festival for a military pomp and show blurs the line between devotion and display.
Mr Modi, we need to give Pakistan sleepless nights not Indians pic.twitter.com/fWaPGY4Ruu
— Swati Chaturvedi (@bainjal) May 2, 2025
For many observers, Modi’s “sleepless nights” quip spoke less of national confidence and more of a nation caught in the reflex of rivalry — one that resurfaces even when lamps of peace are meant to be lit.
It might reflect that rather PM Modi was having sleepless nights ever since he saw the readiness and promptness of Pakistan’s defense formations that reuplsed the so-called operation Sindoor by blowing off the Indian air force’s French state-of-the-art Rafale aircraft.
Perhaps Diwali’s truest lesson lies in the quiet it invites, not the noise it provokes. Its lamps were never meant to cast light across borders as warning flares, but to illuminate the heart — where victories are moral, not martial.
Until that light is remembered, the world may continue to see the irony of a festival of peace turned into a podium of provocation — a celebration where fireworks outshine reflection.
