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DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA, May 30, 2004: The South African Hindu Maha Sabha has asked the government to declare Diwali a public holiday for Hindus. The Sabha made a written submission to the Department of Home Affairs in January to have the Festival of Lights recognized as a public holiday. It also made an oral submission during a meeting with the department in the Durban City Hall last month. On May 1, it convened a special general meeting of representatives of various linguistic groups in the Kendra Hall in Durban to discuss the issue. Dr. Dorasamy Moodley, joint secretary of the Sabha, said the meeting agreed that Diwali would be celebrated on November 12 this year. He said the rationale behind observing Diwali on one day, instead of two days, was to fall in line with other countries such as Singapore, Malaysia and India, which all celebrate the festival on a single day. “But that does not deprive any community of observing other days as well. They can have it for two days or a week, but for the sake of highlighting this specific festival, we need to recognize one day,” said Moodley. “You can’t ask for two calendar days and also, in terms of economics, I think it’s time that we tried to compromise and recognized one day as Diwali. “Two days make it difficult in terms of economics and even in the school situation. We need to look at the mechanics of that, and that’s why we’ve called for discussion with a number of religious organizations. “From next year it’s going to be a date taken from the Hindi community, and then maybe a date from the Tamil community.”



It was agreed that a multilinguistic team be appointed to determine the dates of all Hindu festivals in South Africa. He said the response to the call for Diwali to be declared a public holiday had been very positive. They were awaiting feedback from the department. “We will have to leave it to Home Affairs to take a decision, but it may be a long process.” Home Affairs spokesman Lesley Mashokwe said the issue of public holidays was being attended to. He said the department had received representations from various organizations. “We’ve completed public hearings, and we are now in the process of synthesizing this whole process. Once we’ve have synthesized it, then we will be able to formulate recommendations to the minister to say this is what the people want.”

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