SACRAMENTO, California (LifeSiteNews) — Public school students could be forced to celebrate the Hindu holiday of “Diwali” under a bill rapidly moving its way through the California legislature.

AB 268 passed the California Assembly by a 78-0 vote and now must pass the state senate before heading to the governor’s desk. The law would declare Diwali a state holiday and encourage public schools to promote it, which raises religious liberty concerns.

Either on the actual day of Diwali or on a different day “public schools and educational institutions throughout this state may include exercises, funded through existing resources, acknowledging and celebrating the meaning and importance of Diwali.”

“The State Board of Education may adopt a model curriculum guide to be available for use by public schools for exercises related to Diwali,” according to the bill.

The California Family Council criticized the push for the bill and said the main sponsor, Democratic Assemblywoman Darshana Patel, is misleading the public about what the holiday means.

Patel “described Diwali in vague terms as a holiday highlighting ‘good triumphing over evil, light overcoming darkness, and the enduring power of community, resilience, and hope,'” according to the California Family Council. “These are actually all California values. These are all human values.”

However, the pro-family group points out Diwali “typically involves ritualistic prayers to Indian deities such as Maa Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and prosperity, and Lord Rama, whose triumph over evil is central to the celebration of Diwali.”

“Other gods include Sita, the goddess of fertility and devotion; Hanuman, the monkey god; Kali, the goddess of power and destruction; and Lord Ganesha, the remover of obstacles,” the California Family Council notes.

“Why is it that public schools can’t even say ‘Christmas’ without controversy, but now Sacramento wants to celebrate a religious Hindu holiday with full government blessing?” California Family Council President Greg Burt stated. “We’ve gone from Christmas Vacation to ‘Winter Break,’ yet suddenly religious holidays honoring Lakshmi and Rama are fine?”

His group raised other issues about the law. “Nothing in the bill clarifies if exercises ‘celebrating’ Diwali will be limited to class decorations, facts and history related to the holiday or if it will allow actual Diwali religious rituals or prayers to Hindu idols.”

Indeed, the state previously considered forcing students to chant to Aztec deities as part of its “ethnic studies curriculum.”

“The curriculum includes an official ‘ethnic studies community chant,’ in which students appeal to the Aztec gods—including the god of human sacrifice—for the power to become ‘warriors’ for ‘social justice,'” conservative journalist Christopher Rufo reported in 2021. The state withdrew the proposal following a lawsuit that same year, according to The College Fix.

Other political commentators criticized the bill for its focus on a group of people that comprise just two percent of the population. “What about Catholic, Presbyterian, Muslim, Buddhist and Jewish official state holidays,” Katy Grimes, editor-in-chief of the California Globe asked. “Wouldn’t these groups get jealous? 28% of California residents are Catholic.”

The requirement to celebrate Diwali also may cause expensive legal problems for public schools.

Chicago Public Schools recently agreed to distribute $2.6 million among 773 students who were forced to participate in Hindu meditation, as previously covered by LifeSiteNews.

The students “were either required to participate in Transcendental Meditation as part of their in-school curriculum or were deprived daily of a half-hour of academic instruction and required to maintain silence while their classmates focused their minds on secret mantras,” according to the religious freedom legal group Mauck and Baker.

“This settlement vindicates the concerns of former students and parents that the initiation ceremony and daily meditation regime were effectively demonic invocation and thus violated the Establishment Clause of the Constitution,” attorney John Mauck stated. “We hope this settlement will deter those who exploit young people and that it will encourage the Chicago Board of Education to be wary of harming students by allowing wolves to prey on the sheep they are obligated to protect.”

Hinduism also teaches a false equivalency between religions, as pointed out by Catholic Answers.

“Hinduism is popular because, like Buddhism, it avoids conflict, since it believes all religious traditions are different paths to the same end,” Anthony Clark wrote in a 2012 article. “But, as we shall see, this is a contradiction: To assert that two conflicting positions are in fact correlative is not only irrational but untruthful.”

Catholicism, Clark writes, is “the only true faith, founded upon the natural and revealed certainties given by one God” so it “cannot by sound reasoning fit into the ideals of religious pluralism.”

The article also quotes well-respected Catholic apologist Peter Kreeft, noting the problems with Eastern mysticism. “Individuality is an illusion according to Eastern mysticism,” Kreeft said. “Not that we are not real but that we are not distinct from God or each other.”

Hinduism, thus, “denies the possibility of a creator God,” Clark writes.