{"id":7173,"date":"2008-10-30T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-30T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2008\/10\/30\/diwali-colors-dazzles-students-in-texas-2\/"},"modified":"2008-10-30T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-10-30T12:00:00","slug":"diwali-colors-dazzles-students-in-texas-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2008\/10\/30\/diwali-colors-dazzles-students-in-texas-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Diwali Colors Dazzles Students in Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\"><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.dailytexanonline.com\/festival_lights_up_the_night\">www.dailytexanonline.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA, October 29, 2008: Fireworks illuminated the night sky for Diwali, a traditional Indian celebration that represents the victory of good over evil. The Hindu Students Council hosted a Diwali celebration Tuesday night on the Main Mall.<\/p>\n<p>Candlelit steps, with piles of shoes strewn at the bottom, welcomed Hindu and non-Hindu students to a ritual of mock sacrifice, called havan. The ritual was led by a priest and involved a fire ceremony, which was meant to bring prosperity and luck to the new year. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;[Diwali celebrates] a universal idea,&#8221; said Santanu Rahman, Multicultural Information Center program coordinator. &#8220;Anyone can connect to it. There is a huge visual aspect, but the meaning is very powerful.&#8221; &#8220;Diwali is the largest Hindu holiday of the year,&#8221; said Nikhil Nayak, president of Hindu Students Council. &#8220;We celebrate in an authentic style.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It is hard for students to go home and celebrate Diwali traditionally with family, said Ronak Shah, council co-chair. &#8220;Our goal was to recreate the atmosphere,&#8221; Shah said.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>www.dailytexanonline.com AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA, October 29, 2008: Fireworks illuminated the night sky for Diwali, a traditional Indian celebration that represents,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}