Now to answer your question. Is this beautiful image below really depicting India’s billion+ divos / deevos (oil lamps) lit during the Diwali festival?
I’m afraid not. It is depicting the progressive growth from 1992 to 2003. The Science Photo Gallery site explains it it more detail.
Asato ma sat gamaya 😉 – after all, that’s what this festival is all about right? Continue reading to learn about the significance of all 5 days in this Hindu celebration:
Diwali is the festival of lights, joy, brightness, and happiness. We pray to make our life happier and to enlighten cultural, emotional, and spiritual values in our lives. The uniqueness of this festival is that five separate values from Indian philosophy denoted to five different days.
The five days celebration of Diwali begins with Dhanteras, the day to worship Lakshmi, the Goddess of wealth. Wealth has many forms: Health, love, family, friends, your unique qualities, power, and also money and other material things. (Oct 24 this year – it’s based on the lunar calendar so it changes annually)
Kali chaudas is the day to worship Kali, Goddess of strength. Strength should be used for positive things, to remove impurity from inside of us and destroy the evil in the world. “Ashakti” is impious strength that is used to harm others. We pray to Kali to give us the power to resist ashakti and make ourselves better. (Oct 25)
Diwali is the festival of lights. A lamp or divo is the symbol of knowledge that leads us from darkness to light. With one divo, we can light many other divos; we can’t do this with a light bulb. By looking at this special quality, we should enlighten ourselves with knowledge and understanding and pass the “light” onto others around us. (Oct 26)
The day after Diwali is the New Year in the Vikram Samvat calendar. It will be the year 2068. It is the time to take accounts of one’s life, to reflect upon life & remove anger, hatred, envy, jealousy from life & have renewed hope for the new year. Begin the new year with a fresh start. (Oct 27)
The final day is Bhai Beej. This day symbolize the society’s respect for all women. This day gives every man the noble outlook to consider every woman as a mother or a sister. The brother goes to the sister’s home on this day and they spend time together. In a festival in August called Raksha Bandhan, the sister this time goes to the brother’s or parents’ home. (Oct 28)
UPDATE on October 27th – See where Indians are celebrating Diwali across the world!
Once again, have a wonderful Diwali and Nutan Vasha Abhinandan (Happy New Year)!
Comments
19 responses to “India Diwali Satellite Image Real or Fake”
Thanks for the info or else I would have thought it to be the image of Diwali night! ;P
no problem! I thought the same thing until I found that science photo site. I’m sure Diwali in India feels like that image though, never had the chance to experience it in the motherland.
Thanks for the info. But Diwali in India is surely magical. There is something amazing about the festival… what with the colourful rangolis, divas, lamps, lights, crackers, pujas, flowers, sweets…. It is the time to be in India…. ofcourse, any time in this wonderful country is simply superb.
Happy Diwali!
yeah we do our best here in the US to recreate the environment in our homes and temples. We put up “christmas” lights and deevos all over the house this past weekend, and tonight we’ll be adding some rangoli!
Thanks for taking the time to tell it like it is, Pathik Bhatt.
With the best of intentions, the original posters of the picture appear to have set out to confuse and that is not good, after all…..
DIWALI IS THE SEASON OF ENLIGHTENMENT.
A big Thank You and Shubh Diwali to one and all…
My pleasure, Satish! I just figured others would have the same question I did when I first saw the picture.
Very well written indeed. Great job with the “enlightening” image. Does it actually calculate the number of hit you get on your blog?
Yupp, signup for Google Analytics, it’s free. If you have WordPress, just search “google analytics” in your plugins tab and you should find one that lets you insert the code into your blog (after you have signed up for Analytics). Let me know if you need more help, or just Google it and you’ll find tons of information about it.
Pathik,
Its good that we have both busted the myth, of course my idea was to give some evidence of theoretical truths about social media.
Your analytics data is about your blog traffic, right?
At 5k I am not doing too bad either – Here’s the Update http://wp.me/pBQb9-72 to the original post http://wp.me/pBQb9-6O
Thanks for such detailed information about this picture. Since last year, i believed this image to be a real one. Thanks for clearing confusions. 🙂
no problem Monita, it’s amazing to see how far social media has come – not many people seem to have known about it last year, but it really spread this year like crazy!
The brightest part in the picture is one which is expected to be least bright. Mountainous region along Indo-Pak border!!!
Makes me believe that it is fake.
good observation
Hello Pratik thanks for the 5 days discription, as long as Image is concerned..
I am 100% sure that the image is not real.. its fake. what do these sparkles or glares represent, they cannot be road lamps or any lamps bcz they seems to have radius of kilometer(s). If one will take such picture from space it can never look like this, there are crores of lamps in the whole country and here they are hardly in lakhs. real size of a lamp wud be very tiny almost negligible in comparison of the whole country (specially India).the density of lamps is looking like if we are seeing a map of any city
Look at a series of lights at border of Rajasthan..what is that… i wonder !! and China and Pakistan are soo dark.. the overall real picture cannot be so clear ..it will be a blur… … what do U think Pratik bhai ?
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I’m not Indian or Hindu, but I enjoy learning. I shared this page on my Facebook. I was looking for images for Dawali that best showed the festival of candles, and this one was my favorite. Thanks for the narrative.
corollary: this is not DIwali pic because indu velly with all his tributaries and dis-tributaries are lighting and indu river is in PAKISTAN and muslim never celebrate DIWALI [email protected]