New York city passes bill to make Diwali school holiday; governor's assent awaited
Last week, the New York state legislature passed a bill to make the festival of Diwali a school holiday in the city. The bill was passed in both the senate and the assembly. It now awaits the signature of New York’s governor Kathy Hochul to make it a law.
This is the culmination of efforts spread over more than two decades by the South Asian community in New York city to make Diwali, the festival of lights celebrated by hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, a school holiday.
Jenifer Rajkumar, the Democrat assemblywoman and the first South-Asian American woman to be elected to state office in New York, introduced the bill in October last year.
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“It has fulfilled the dream of the South Asian community,” she said after the bill was passed.
The pioneers of this bill had failed in two earlier attempts in 2021 and 2022 to pass the legislation.
Pennsylvania is the only other state in the US, in April this year, to have declared Diwali a state holiday.
According to New York State education laws, there must be a minimum of 180 days of school instruction. However, in order to meet this 180-day minimum requirement, no more holidays could be instituted in the school calendar, and that was a stumbling block in the efforts to make Diwali a school holiday.
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What Jenifer Rajkumar’s legislation did was to remove Anniversary Day, an “obscure and antiquated” day created in the 1800s that was observed by no one, so that it could be replaced with Diwali, “celebrated by a growing number of New Yorkers.”
There is also an initiative to make Diwali a federal holiday. US Congresswoman Grace Meng introduced a bill in the US Congress in May this year to declare Diwali a federal holiday. If this legislation is passed by the US Congress and signed by the US President, Diwali would become the 12th federal holiday in the United States.
(With agency inputs)
