Congress asked to make Diwali a federal holiday, with 19 lawmakers behind the bill

A bill filed the morning after the lamps went out

On Monday 9 November 2026, the day after Diwali was celebrated across the United States, Representative Grace Meng of New York reintroduced the Diwali Day Act, a bill that would add Diwali to the list of federal holidays. Meng, a Democrat who chairs the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, brought the measure back with 19 co-sponsors, five of them Indian-American. If Congress passed it and the president signed it, Diwali, also known as Deepavali, the Festival of Lights, would become the 12th federally recognised holiday in the country, the first addition since Juneteenth in 2021.

The bill is a single line of law: it would amend Section 6103(a) of Title 5 of the United States Code, the statute naming the nation's legal public holidays, adding "Diwali Day". The practical effect would be a paid day off for federal employees and the closure of federal offices on a date that moves each year; in 2026 it fell on 7 and 8 November. The timing was deliberate: the caucus issued its statement while the festival was still fresh, presenting the holiday as a measure of whether the country values its observers.

The names, the number and the mechanism

The 19 co-sponsors named by the caucus are Nanette Barragán, Wesley Bell, Ami Bera, André Carson, Judy Chu, Suzan DelBene, Josh Gottheimer, Ro Khanna, Timothy Kennedy, Raja Krishnamoorthi, Stephen Lynch, Deborah Ross, Lateefah Simon, Suhas Subramanyam, Tom Suozzi, Mark Takano, Shri Thanedar, Rashida Tlaib and Bonnie Watson Coleman. Five are Indian-American, Bera, Khanna, Krishnamoorthi, Subramanyam and Thanedar, and all 19 are Democrats. Eighteen organisations endorse it, among them Asian Americans Advancing Justice, the Hindu Temple Society of North America, the Sikh Coalition and the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans.

The text describes Diwali as one of the most important holidays of the year for Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists, and for South Asian, Southeast Asian and Indo-Caribbean communities. Meng put the case in moral terms: "Diwali represents the triumph of good over evil and knowledge over ignorance. At a time when anti-Hindu and anti-South Asian hate is on the rise, recognising Diwali as a federal holiday sends a powerful message that Hindus, as well as Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists, are valued members of our society." Behind that framing, the caucus listed vandalism at Hindu places of worship, an attempted mass shooting during Navratri at an Illinois Hindu temple, and the racist disruption of a Diwali celebration in Washington State.

What would the bill change on the day itself?

For most Americans, the honest answer is: less than the headline suggests; a federal holiday closes federal offices and gives federal employees a paid day off, but it does not compel private employers, states or schools to follow. What it does is set a national marker, the same one that made Diwali a school holiday in New York City and a state holiday in Pennsylvania.

What the announcement leaves unanswered

The reintroduction is the beginning of a legislative process, not its end, and the announcement leaves the decisive questions open. No committee hearing has been scheduled, and the bill's referral, expected to go to the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, where the 2023 version stalled, has not been confirmed publicly. Nor is there a Senate companion bill, which the measure would need to reach the president's desk. The co-sponsor list is entirely Democratic, and no Republican has yet signed on to this version, although the 2023 text did attract one at introduction.

There is also no timetable. The current Congress is in its final weeks, with the midterm elections just held, and bills not enacted by the end of a two-year Congress die with it. Whether either chamber's leadership intends to give the bill floor time, and whether the White House would sign it, the announcement does not say.

Why a holiday is about belonging, not a day off

The federal holiday list is short, eleven days, and every addition says who counts as American in the official sense. The last addition, Juneteenth in 2021, recognised a history the country had long kept at arm's length; Diwali would do something different, recognising a present-tense community still facing vandalism, intimidation and targeted violence. That is why the announcement was framed as an answer to hate rather than a calendar reform: the day off is the mechanism, the message is the point. The pattern is not confined to the United States; a deadly racist attack in France showed the same hatred wearing a different flag.

For the communities named in the bill, the stakes are practical: children who miss school or sit exams on the festival's main day, workers who spend leave to observe it, temples that organise around a working day. New York's school-holiday decision in 2023 showed what recognition changes at street level, and Pennsylvania's state-holiday law showed it can move when the politics align.

The counterweight is the calendar: eleven federal holidays already cost the federal government a working day each, and every community with a claim can point to one, the Lunar New Year Day Act, also Meng's, waits in the same queue. The bill's supporters answer that Diwali is observed by four major religions and by communities on every continent, a breadth no other candidate holiday can claim.

The long road from a resolution to the statute book

This is the third attempt in five years, and its history explains the confidence and the caution. In 2021, Carolyn Maloney introduced the Deepavali Day Act, H.R. 5904; it went nowhere. In May 2023 Meng introduced her own version, H.R. 3336, with 13 original co-sponsors; referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, it never received a vote. A separate resolution on Diwali, introduced by Raja Krishnamoorthi in October 2025, also remains symbolic. The pattern is familiar in Congress: cultural-recognition bills are easy to introduce and hard to move, because they cost a working day and invite every other community to ask for the same.

What has changed since 2023 is the scaffolding underneath: Pennsylvania made Diwali a state holiday and New York City a school holiday, the co-sponsors have grown from 13 to 19, and the endorsements now run to 18 organisations spanning Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, civil-rights and bar-association groups. The balance of power in Congress after the midterms will decide whether that scaffolding matters: a bill with only Democratic co-sponsors needs a change of arithmetic or of mind across the aisle, and the 2023 version's one Republican co-sponsor shows the bridge exists, even if no one has yet walked across it.

Why has this failed twice before?

Because a federal holiday is a cost as well as a symbol, and Congress rarely spends floor time on a measure that helps one community while inviting a queue of others. Juneteenth passed in 2021 with overwhelming bipartisan support because it carried a national history no one wanted to oppose; Diwali's case rests on demography and dignity, easier to praise in a statement than to vote for in a session's final weeks. The bill's path runs through the committee room, where the last two versions died.

What a twelfth holiday would set in motion

If the bill ever became law, the effects would ripple beyond federal offices: school districts that treat Diwali as an ordinary day would face pressure to close or excuse absences; states that have held back would have a federal precedent; employers with large South Asian workforces would find a floating holiday harder to refuse. The Lunar New Year Day Act would gain a powerful precedent; once the calendar grows by one cultural holiday, the case for the next gets easier.

There is also a diplomatic echo: India and the United States have just finalised the first phase of a trade deal, and the Indian-American community's political weight is visible in the House itself, with five of its members behind this bill. A federal holiday would be the most public recognition yet that the relationship between the two countries is carried, in part, by the people who live between them; and India's standing as a rising power makes it a matter of statecraft as much as sentiment.

The committee calendar decides everything now

The next step is procedural and unglamorous: referral to committee, most likely the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, where the 2023 version stalled. A hearing would be the first sign of life; a markup the second. Without either, the bill will expire with the Congress and return in a fourth version. The signals to watch are the co-sponsor list, whether a Republican signs on, as one did in 2023, and whether a Senate companion appears, since no bill reaches the president without one. The diaspora organisations behind the endorsements will lobby through the winter; the test is the committee's calendar.