Desis in San Francisco pitch for school holiday for Diwali

In a nod to the growing Indian-American population in the San Francisco Bay Area, there’s a nascent movement afoot to have Diwali named an official public school holiday. The effort is being pushed in Fremont, Sunnyvale, and San Jose, cities where the growing Indian population ranges from nearly 5% to 18%. A self-described “Hindu statesman” named Rajan Zed, who has a knack for garnering media attention, appears to be spearheading the campaign, having recently issued numerous press releases on the idea. [caption id=“attachment_25015” align=“alignright” width=“380” caption=“Indian-Americans in the Bay Area are lobbying for a school holiday for Diwali, which is “our Christmas.” Amit Dave / Reuters”] [/caption] The Nevada-based Zed  told the San Jose Mercury News that he was inspired to push for Diwali school closures in the Bay Area because two districts in New Jersey (Passaic City and South Brunswick) have already done so. He said he thought the Bay Area, with its large Indian population, would be a good place to focus his attention. The concept has won support from Indian-American community leaders such as Raj Bhanot, a co-founder of the Sunnyvale Hindu Temple. “This is our Christmas,” Bhanot told the San Jose Mercury News. “We want to experience our holiday at home with our families.” Bhanot also said he would begin contacting school districts about this idea in the coming months. Though school officials said they wanted to support diversity, adding a new holiday to the school calendar can be a tricky proposition. That’s because the number of days that school employees work are negotiated through the local and state labour unions. (For example, when San Francisco Unified School District added the Lunar New Year as a school holiday in 2007, it required the district to provide $207,000 in holiday pay to its teachers when the holiday fell on a week day.) And providing a holiday on Diwali could open the religious holiday floodgates and lead to demands for days off at the end of Ramadan for Muslims and on Vaisakhi for Sikhs (not to mention the holy days for the many additional religions observed in the US). Besides, some school officials said, Diwali is already celebrated in theclassrooms and at the community level all over the Bay Area. An uphill battle Adding school holidays to the instructional calendar in the US can often be an uphill fight. One Chinese-American legislator from New York has tried to follow in San Francisco’s footsteps by introducing state legislation that would make the Lunar New Year a school holiday for cities with more than 1 million residents or where at least 7.5% of the population is Chinese. But she’s been voted down three times, and she has even received death threats from individuals who dislike the idea. Muslim students in New York City have also rallied for holidays on Eid-ul Adha and Eid-ul Fitr, but thus far, to no avail. Currently, US public school holidays are not religion-based, although they typically coincide with major Christian holidays, such as Easter (spring break) and Christmas (winter break). So what do you think? Should Diwali get wider recognition from Bay Area public schools? Should American students get days off for other religious holidays, too?