📷: President Joe Biden speaks at a reception celebrating Diwali, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Oct. 28, 2024.

📷: President Joe Biden speaks at a reception celebrating Diwali, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Oct. 28, 2024.

👉 U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday hailed the start of the five-day festival of Diwali — the celebration that symbolizes the victory of light over darkness and is marked by Hindus, Jains and Sikhs around the world, especially in India.

Biden began the White House festivities by lighting a small prayer lamp known as a diya. Several hundred guests — including South Asian administration officials, elected officials, prominent community members and others — wore silks and embroidered finery and thronged the White House’s massive and heavily chandeliered East Room for the occasion.

But Biden used the occasion to shine a light on someone who was not in the crowd: Vice President Kamala Harris, the most prominent South Asian American, who was busy on the campaign trail as the election swiftly approaches. Her late mother immigrated to the United States from what was then the Indian city of Madras, now called Chennai.

“One of the things we bonded over was the role each of our mothers played in our lives,” Biden said. “They come from different places, different generations, different lives, but they shared a basic belief about America: Only in America is anything possible. Only in America.”

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