Fireworks
Fireworks and firecrackers are a later addition to Diwali, a festival of lamps far older than gunpowder in India. Since 2017 India’s courts have restricted them in and around Delhi because of the smog.
Meaning
On Lakshmi Puja night, Britannica says, families light diyas, candles and fireworks, though such displays “have been restricted to limit noise and other environmental pollution”. The Hindu American Foundation counts firecrackers with candles and clay lamps among the lights that symbolise “the victory of good over evil, knowledge over ignorance, and spiritual light over darkness.” At Amritsar fireworks burst over the Harimandir Sahib on Bandi Chhor Divas. The lamps are what the festival is named for; the crackers came much later, and whether they belong to it at all is argued over inside the traditions as well as in court.
Origin and history
The festival is older than fireworks in India. The historian P. K. Gode, in The History of Fireworks in India between A.D. 1400 and 1900 (1950), concluded that fireworks at Diwali “must have come into existence after about 1400 AD, when gunpowder came to be used in Indian warfare.” Gode found formulas for fireworks in the Kautukachintamani, a Sanskrit work by Gajapati Prataparudradeva of Odisha (1497–1539). Summarising the history for ThePrint in 2020, Mohana Basu writes that in the Mughal period fireworks were for the wealthy and the court, displayed at weddings, coronations and festivals such as Shab-e-Barat; that their use at Diwali probably did not begin before the 18th century, when Maratha rulers put on displays for the public; and that crackers became a household custom only after Independence, when Indian factories, with Sivakasi in Tamil Nadu at their centre, began making them in quantity.
The courts and Delhi’s air
After the smog that followed Diwali in 2016, India’s Supreme Court ordered a temporary ban on the sale of firecrackers in the Delhi region in October 2017, and the Punjab and Haryana High Court allowed crackers only from 6.30 to 9.30 pm on Diwali; Hindu activists protested by setting off crackers in New Delhi. In 2018, in Arjun Gopal v. Union of India, the Supreme Court set rules to reduce the pollution without a total ban, weighing, as it later put it, the livelihoods of the firecracker trade, the right to clean air and “the cultural and traditional significance of Diwali festivities”. Delhi’s government ordered a blanket ban on firecrackers in October 2024, later extended to the whole National Capital Region, and a directive of April 2025 prohibited making, selling and using any crackers, green ones included, for a year.
In October 2025 a bench of Chief Justice B. R. Gavai and Justice K. Vinod Chandran relaxed the ban as a test case: crackers certified as green by the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute could be burst in Delhi and the National Capital Region from 6 to 7 am and 8 to 10 pm on the eve and the day of Diwali. The bench observed that air quality had not markedly improved between 2018 and 2024 under the ban, except during the pandemic lockdown. On 30 September 2026 Justices M. M. Sundresh and P. B. Varale said they would allow neither a total ban nor crackers round the clock: “Total ban will affect sentiments. And allowing them throughout the day will have huge impact on every other living being, including old, sick, and children.” The government asked for time until 15 October 2026 for the Central Pollution Control Board to report on barium-based crackers, and the court granted the board time.
Disagreement within the traditions
When the National Green Tribunal banned firecrackers in 2020, spokespeople of the Vishva Hindu Parishad and the Swadeshi Jagran Manch opposed it, saying that “use of crackers is deeply linked with Diwali celebration.” Jains sometimes argue the other way, Nalini Balbir writes, that fireworks should be banned or at least limited because they may hurt many tiny creatures. Some Sikhs, the BBC reported, prefer not to use them because of the noise, the pollution and the risk of deaths and injuries.
Read next
- Next in Diwali symbolsMithai (sweets)Sweets made and given at Diwali, shared with family and friends and offered in worship. Jains offer a large laddu, the nirvan laddu, to Mahavira for the anniversary of his liberation.
- In Lunar New Year symbolsFirecrackersStrings of small paper firecrackers set off to see out the old year and greet the new. Their bangs were meant to frighten off evil spirits and, in a legend first written down in modern times, the monster Nian. Many cities now restrict them.
See also
Diya (oil lamp), Rangoli, Lakshmi’s lotus and coins, Lakshmi’s footprints, Akash deep (Diwali lantern), Toran (door garland).
Sources
- If not pollution, Hindu groups still have 2 good reasons to support firecracker ban on Diwali, Mohana Basu, ThePrint, 14 November 2020, ThePrint, opening paragraphs; history
- Diwali Fireworks Are Limited In India Over Toxic Smog Concerns, Bill Chappell, NPR, The Two-Way, 13 October 2017, NPR, report
- Bursting of green firecrackers allowed in Delhi-NCR for Diwali but under strict conditions, notes Supreme Court, Parmod Kumar, The Leaflet, 15 October 2025, The Leaflet, report
- Supreme Court allows limited use of green crackers in NCR for Diwali, Bhavini Mishra, Business Standard, 15 October 2025, Business Standard, report
- SC permits sale and use of green crackers in Delhi-NCR during Diwali, DD News, 15 October 2025, DD News (Prasar Bharati), report
- No 24-hour firecracker use during Diwali but no total ban either: Supreme Court moots balanced approach, Ritwik Choudhury, Bar and Bench, 30 September 2026, Bar and Bench, report
- Dīvālī (Nalini Balbir, Jainpedia), Nalini Balbir, Jainpedia, Festivals, Jainpedia, Institute of Jainology, Fifteenth day
- Diwali (BBC Religions: Sikhism), BBC Religion and Ethics, archived page, last updated 20 October 2011, BBC, The Festival of Lights
- Diwali (Encyclopaedia Britannica), Britannica Editors; revised and updated by Shatarupa Chaudhuri, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Wayback Machine copy, 22 September 2026), Festivities
- 5 things to know about Diwali, Hindu American Foundation blog, 3 November 2020, Hindu American Foundation, 1) Diwali is known as the “Festival of Lights”
- DIVALI (Bandi Chhor Divas), RE:ONLINE festivals calendar, Sikhi, RE:ONLINE, Culham St Gabriel's, paragraph on Amritsar
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Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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