Dev Deepawali: the Diwali of the gods in Varanasi

Diwali falls on the new moon of Kartik and is kept at home across India: a Lakshmi puja, lamps on doorsteps, fireworks. Dev Deepawali comes a fortnight later, on the full moon, and belongs to one city and one river. It is Varanasi's own festival, and its stage is the riverfront: the stone steps of the 84 ghats.

The idea behind it is in the name. Varanasi tradition holds that on this night the gods come down to Kashi, the old name of the city, to bathe in the Ganga, and they light lamps for a Diwali of their own. The day is also called Tripura Purnima and is linked with the worship of Shiva. The lamps honour the Ganga as a river and a goddess, and through the whole month of Kartik people bathe in the river at dawn and float lamps on it in the evening, an offering called deepdaan. The legend of King Divodasa and the gods, told in the cards above, is the city's own story of why the gods come to Kashi on this night.

In short: Diwali is for the home, Dev Deepawali is for the river. People who picture Varanasi's ghats covered in lamps are picturing Dev Deepawali, not Diwali.

Dev Deepawali follows the lunar calendar, so the date moves: usually it is in November, in some years late October. The festival begins on Prabodhini Ekadashi, a few days before the full moon, and these days are a religious window with temple rites and bathing. The great lamp evening is only the last one, the Kartik Purnima: 24 November 2026.

When the full moon begins on the evening before, almanacs can disagree about which evening is right. Varanasi lights the ghats on the Kartik Purnima bathing day, the day on which the full moon is current at sunrise, and it has done so even in years when some scholars recommended the evening before. The Varanasi district administration usually confirms the date and the rules for boats by October, so treat any date as provisional until then. The dates on this page come from the India GO calendar and are marked when they are still expected rather than announced.

Lamps for the river in Kartik are an old practice, but the festival in its present form is recent. It was begun at Dashashwamedh Ghat in 1991, with Pandit Kishori Raman Dubey, known as Babu Maharaj, named as its initiator. Local people lit the first rows of lamps, other ghat committees followed year by year, and the lights spread along the whole riverfront. Today it is the city's largest night of the year, and the Uttar Pradesh government takes part: at a recent edition the state counted about 2.5 million lamps on the 84 ghats.

Two parts of the evening are set ceremonies. At Dashashwamedh Ghat the Ganga aarti is performed on a larger scale than on ordinary nights, by a row of young priests and young women, with fire, conches and drums. On the same ghat wreaths are laid at a replica of the Amar Jawan Jyoti, and the army, navy and air force sound the Last Post for fallen soldiers.