India, Nov. 6 -- Bibhuti Bhushan Malik

From Lord Rama's return to Ayodhya and Krishna's victory over Narakasura to Kali Puja and Bandi Chhor Divas, Diwali takes many forms across India. Beyond religious rituals, the festival strengthens social bonds, renews relationships and celebrates the country's rich cultural diversity.

Few occasions in the Indian calendar travel as far as Diwali, and fewer change so much along the way. The name stays roughly constant from Amritsar to Madurai and from Kolkata to Surat, yet the gods invoked, the stories told and the rituals performed shift with the landscape. Read closely, that variety shows Diwali to be less a single religious event than a social institution, one that reveals how Indians remember th...