Barack Obama’s comments Happy Diwali and Saal Mubarak made him the first U.S. President to celebrate an Indian lights festival called Diwali. The first-ever Diwali ceremonial lamp in White House was lit by Barack Obama on October 15, 2009. However, it was President George Bush who initiated the tradition.

United States President Barack Obama continued to follow a gesture of the former U.S. president Mr. George Bush when on October 15; he lit a ceremonial lamp in the White House to inaugurate the forthcoming 5-day-long Indian lights festival that starts this Saturday. Since the traditional festival of ‘Diwali’ is celebrated as the victory of good against bad or evil i.e. uplifting of spiritual darkness, the Hindus and Sikhs decorate their homes with lamps of all kinds to kill the darkness.

So it happened at the East Room of the White House when Obama used a candle to lit the lamp along with a Hindu priest who was traditionally dressed with a typical three-forked mark on his forehead called ‘tilak.’ The priest then recited a holy prayer while Obama listened intently to the Upanishads (the Hindu scripture and a Sanskrit text according to Hindu philosophy).

The prayers meant to lead the mankind from the unreal to the real, from the dark to light and from death to the freedom. George Bush also celebrated the Diwali but he was never seen at the Indian Treaty Room in the Old Executive Office Building near the White House, to personally participate in the celebrations with the minorities.

Obama returned the priest’s greetings, a typical Hindu way with folded hands called ‘namaste,’ and his warm remarks such as ‘Happy Diwali’ and ‘Saal Mubarak,’ before leaving the sight. One of the journalists thanked Obama for being the first president participating in the Diwali ceremony while Obama remarked back and said; “It is something indeed.”

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