Why the 2024 US presidential election is a Diwali gift to Indian Americans

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The “Diwali stamp" was practically an annual ritual in the United States. While working in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 2000s I remember every year someone or the other would forward an email with a petition to the United States Postmaster General, asking them to issue a Diwali stamp.

Excited desis would sign it and forward it to everyone they knew. Every year they were told this would be the year. Every year they were disappointed.

Hanukkah, Christmas, Eid had all gotten stamps. Indians in America craved a Diwali stamp. It would literally be a stamp of approval.

In 2013, Indian-American congressman Ami Bera pushed for it, saying, “A Diwali stamp has been long overdue." That year 1,300 letter petitions and tens of thousands of signatures were delivered to the US Postal Service, demanding a Diwali stamp. The postal service eventually saw the light. In 2016, it issued a Forever stamp, showing a diya against a sparkling gold background, “forever" meaning the stamp could be used indefinitely.

At the stamp dedication ceremony at the Indian consulate in New York, congresswoman Carolyn Maloney said over 100,000 stamps had been sold already. But almost immediately new emails started doing the rounds warning desis and their friends that “if the stamp does not sell enough, this will be discontinued. Please do not let this happen, do your part TODAY!" The emails caused so much panic, the postal service had to announce that it had no plans to remove the stamps from sale.