FROM REUNIONS TO TRAGEDY
Fakir Hassen|Published
IN INDIAN cinema, Diwali is rarely a passive backdrop. Rather, filmmakers leverage the Festival of Lights as an emotional amplifier, a symbol of moral victory, and a key catalyst for dramatic turning points.
The visual splendour of lit diyas, cascading fireworks, and rich traditional attire provides filmmakers with a vivid palette to explore themes ranging from familial unity and romance to tragedy and moral irony.
A number of blockbuster films have used Diwali as the theme to showcase family reunions and to represent the sanctity of home, cultural heritage, and the emotional resonance of returning to one’s roots.
Perhaps the best-known example of this is the iconic movie Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001), in which director Karan Johar created a family saga that featured perhaps the most recognisable Diwali sequence in modern Hindi cinema.
The film opens its central conflict with a grand Diwali pooja at the Raichand family mansion. The visual language of golden lamps, ornate traditional wear, and a towering, lit-up multi-storey home establishes the family’s extreme wealth and adherence to tradition. The scene culminates in the iconic moment where the matriarch, Nandini (Jaya Bachchan), instinctively senses her son Rahul’s (Shah Rukh Khan) arrival via helicopter, stepping forward with an aarti thali. Here, Diwali embodies maternal intuition and the unbreakable bond of family.
Long before this movie, though, in Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! (1994) Sooraj Barjatya used festival sequences as the structural fabric of its narrative. The song Dikhtana unfolds during Diwali celebrations, where news of a pregnancy is shared amidst gift exchanges and shimmering lights. The festival acts as a unifying agent between two families, reinforcing traditional Indian social structures.
But it has not always been about the triumph of light over darkness in all Bollywood movies related to Diwali. While Diwali traditionally signifies the triumph of light over darkness and good over evil, several notable films subvert this trope, using the brightness of the festival to sharpen the shadows of character downfall.
In Mahesh Manjrekar’s gritty crime drama Vaastav: The Reality (1999), Diwali highlights the tragic transformation of its protagonist, Raghu (Sanjay Dutt). Having descended into the Mumbai underworld, Raghu returns home on Diwali night, dripping in gold, delivering his famous line boasting about his pachas tola (more than half a kilogram) gold chain, to his mother. The glowing lights and celebratory atmosphere contrast sharply with his mother’s grief over her son’s criminal life. The scene turns a time of spiritual illumination into a stark showcase of moral corruption.
Prakash Mehra’s classic Zanjeer (1973) also used Diwali as the tragic origin story for the iconic Angry Young Man persona played by Amitabh Bachchan. As a young child, his character in the film, Inspector Vijay, witnesses the murder of his parents on Diwali night, the sound of gunshots hidden beneath the roar of festive firecrackers. The trauma leaves him with a recurring nightmare of a white horse associated with the killer, making Diwali a psychological trigger rather than a joyful holiday.
Filmmakers have also used the expressive freedom of Diwali festivities to drive romantic subplots and challenge social constraints.
In Mohabbatein (2000), Aditya Chopra uses Diwali as a vehicle for defiance. Set in an authoritarian gurukul (an all-boys boarding school) run by the stern principal Narayan Shankar (Amitabh Bachchan), the students secretly organise a joint Diwali celebration with a neighbouring girls’ school. Through the song Pairon Mein Bandhan Hai, the glow of diyas and fireworks becomes a visual metaphor for romantic freedom, shattering rigid, dark authoritarian rules.
Kamal Haasan’s comedy Chachi 420 (1997) used a Diwali firecracker incident to drive the central plot. When an errant firecracker injures a young girl during Diwali, her estranged father (disguised as an elderly nanny) saves her, securing a job as her governess to stay close to his daughter. The festive chaos serves as a realistic narrative bridge for family reconciliation.
In a stark departure from commercial glitz, Chetan Anand’s war film Haqeeqat (1964) featured the haunting track Kaise Diwali Manayein Hu, sung by soldiers stationed at the frozen borders during the 1962 Sino-Indian War. The film uses Diwali to remind the audience of the human cost of national security, contrasting home celebrations with the cold realities of the battlefront.
So, Diwali in Indian cinema transcends visual spectacle. It provides a versatile narrative canvas where light is not merely used to illuminate the frame, but to expose the moral choices, emotional bonds, and internal conflicts of its characters. Whether through the high-pitched melodrama of a grand homecoming or the sombre silence of a hero facing his demons, Diwali remains one of the most powerful storytelling devices across decades of Indian filmmaking.
Fakir Hassen is a veteran Bollywood critic who has written four books on the subject.