The Welsh Government in collaboration with the Indian Consulate in Wales hosted Digital Diwali which ended in a climax last night to celebrate the Hindu festival of Lights.
The annual religious festival has become a popular event over the past few years for all Welsh people and not just Hindus, and the Senedd decided to create an online forum to share events and activities across the week.
The online festival was free to attend and ran for five days and celebrated one of the most popular festivals of Hinduism, which symbolises the spiritual victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance.
It is estimated that there are at least 20,000 people or Indian descent living in Wales and in the past few years there were major celebrations of Diwali in Cardiff, Newport, Swansea, and north Wales.
This year there were online messages from the new Indian High Commissioner Gaitri Issar Kumar, the First Minister of Wales Mark Drakeford and Indian Honorary Consul for Wales, Raj Aggarwal, as well as Indian cricket coach Ravi Shastri.
The festival included online seminars and activities on trade, inward investment, export, education, culture, and Indian community in Wales. There were dance performances and ‘cook-a-long’ demonstrations. Students at the multi-cultural Fitzalan High School, in Cardiff were filmed taking part in Diwali celebrations.
Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford said, “Diwali is such an incredible celebration in Wales, it’s been getting more and more popular over the past few years and I had a great experience at the event in Cardiff last year. Clearly, we could not meet in public this year but the Welsh Government made great efforts to make sure that people could join online to celebrate this amazing festival, and also to celebrate the amazing contribution that the Indian diaspora make to Wales.”
Indian diplomat Raj Aggarwal said, "It was a wonderful event, we had to be creative, but we really brought people together online at this difficult time. We would like to thank the First Minister and the Welsh Government for making this Digital Diwali possible so that were able to share this important festival with thousands of people across Wales and the world.'
