India has only three national public holidays: Republic Day on 26 January, Independence Day on 15 August, and Gandhi Jayanti on 2 October. Everything else — Diwali, Eid, Christmas, Holi, Good Friday and dozens more — is declared by individual states and by the central government for its own offices, which means the number of public holidays an Indian gets depends entirely on which state they live in and who they work for. The figures quoted for "public holidays in India" vary from three to more than thirty, and all of them are correct in some sense.
The Central Government Holiday List
| Date | Holiday | Description |
|---|---|---|
| January 26 | Republic Day | Celebrates the adoption of the constitution in 1950; grand military parade in New Delhi |
| March 17 | Holi | Festival of colors celebrating spring and the triumph of good over evil |
| March 20 | Eid ul-Fitr (approx.) | Marks the end of Ramadan; date depends on moon sighting |
| March 30 | Good Friday | Observed by Christians across India; public holiday for central government |
| April 6 | Ram Navami | Celebrates the birth of Lord Rama |
| April 14 | Dr. Ambedkar Jayanti | Honors the architect of India's constitution |
| April 14 | Mahavir Jayanti | Celebrates the birth of Lord Mahavira, founder of Jainism |
| May 12 | Buddha Purnima | Commemorates the birth of Gautama Buddha |
| May 27 | Eid ul-Adha (approx.) | Festival of sacrifice; date depends on moon sighting |
| June 17 | Muharram (approx.) | Islamic New Year; date depends on moon sighting |
| August 15 | Independence Day | Marks independence from British rule in 1947; flag-raising ceremonies |
| August 16 | Milad-un-Nabi (approx.) | Birthday of Prophet Muhammad; date depends on moon sighting |
| October 2 | Gandhi Jayanti | Birthday of Mahatma Gandhi; national holiday |
| October 2 | Dussehra | Celebrates the victory of Lord Rama over Ravana |
| October 20 | Diwali | Festival of lights; India's most widely celebrated festival |
| November 15 | Guru Nanak Jayanti | Celebrates the birth of Guru Nanak, founder of Sikhism |
| December 25 | Christmas Day | Celebrated across India by Christians and widely as a cultural holiday |
Three Holidays Everyone Gets
The three national holidays are gazetted by the central government and observed across every state, union territory and sector. They are the only days on which the whole country is guaranteed to be closed.
Republic Day marks the coming into force of the Indian constitution on 26 January 1950, chosen deliberately to echo the Purna Swaraj declaration of complete independence made on that date in 1930. It is observed with a large parade on Kartavya Path in New Delhi, formerly Rajpath, with a foreign head of state as chief guest.
Independence Day marks the transfer of power at midnight on 15 August 1947 and is observed with a prime ministerial address from the ramparts of the Red Fort. Gandhi Jayanti is Mohandas Gandhi's birthday, 2 October 1869, and has been observed by the United Nations as the International Day of Non-Violence since 2007.
Gazetted, Restricted and State Holidays
Beyond the three, the central government publishes a list of gazetted holidays for its own employees — typically fourteen in addition to the national three — plus a longer list of restricted or optional holidays from which each employee may choose two.
The restricted list is the interesting mechanism. It contains observances from every major religious tradition in India: Guru Nanak Jayanti, Muharram, Janmashtami, Onam, Pongal, Easter, Buddha Purnima, Mahavir Jayanti, Nowruz, Chhath Puja and many others. Rather than declare all of them closed, the government lets each employee take the ones that matter to them.
States then add their own. Tamil Nadu closes for Pongal and Tamil New Year; Kerala for Onam; West Bengal for a week of Durga Puja; Punjab for Baisakhi and Guru Nanak Jayanti; Maharashtra for Gudi Padwa and Ambedkar Jayanti. A state government list of twenty or more holidays is normal.
Negotiable Instruments Act Holidays
The list most often quoted in Indian business is not the government holiday list but the one under the Negotiable Instruments Act of 1881. Days declared under section 25 of that act are days on which banks and financial institutions do not process instruments, and each state issues its own.
The practical result is that a bank branch in Chennai and one in Kolkata close on different days, and cheque clearing and settlement calendars differ by state. The Reserve Bank of India publishes a consolidated list annually.
Stock exchanges publish separate calendars again. The NSE and BSE typically observe around fifteen trading holidays a year, which do not match either the central government list or any single state's.
Why the System Works This Way
India has 22 scheduled languages, all the world's major religions in significant numbers, and enormous regional variation in what is culturally important. A single national holiday calendar would either be very short or would impose one region's festivals on the rest.
The constitutional structure supports the outcome. Public holidays are largely a state subject, and state governments are directly accountable for getting their own festival calendar right. A Kerala government that failed to close for Onam would not last long.
The three national days that are shared are all secular and political rather than religious, which is consistent with the constitutional description of India as a secular republic — a word inserted into the preamble by the 42nd amendment in 1976.
The Movable Festivals
Most Indian festivals follow lunar or lunisolar calendars and move against the Gregorian year. Diwali, Holi and Janmashtami follow the Hindu lunisolar calendar; Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha follow the Islamic lunar calendar and shift about eleven days earlier each year; Easter follows the ecclesiastical computus.
There is no single Hindu calendar either. The Vikram Samvat used in the north, the Shaka Samvat that is India's official civil calendar, the Tamil calendar, the Bengali calendar and the Malayalam calendar all differ in their new year dates and month names.
Tamil New Year falls in mid-April, as do Vaisakhi in Punjab, Bihu in Assam, Vishu in Kerala and Poila Boishakh in Bengal — all within a few days of each other, all celebrated separately, and all state holidays only in their own states.
Diwali Is Not a National Holiday
India's most widely observed festival is not on the national list. Diwali is a gazetted holiday for central government employees and a public holiday in essentially every state, but it is not one of the three national holidays.
The practical difference is minimal — almost everything closes — but the formal distinction matters in employment law, in banking calendars and in whether an employer is obliged to pay holiday rates.
The same applies to Eid, Christmas and Good Friday. All are gazetted centrally and observed almost everywhere, and none is a national holiday in the constitutional sense.
Two Hundred Years of Christmas and Good Friday
India's Christian holidays are older than its independence. Good Friday and Christmas were public holidays under the East India Company and then the Raj, and they were retained after 1947 rather than added.
Christians are around 2.3% of the Indian population, roughly 28 million people, concentrated in Kerala, Goa, Tamil Nadu and the north-eastern states. Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya are majority Christian and their holiday calendars reflect it.
Goa, Portuguese until 1961, observes a set of feast days that appear nowhere else in India, including the Feast of St Francis Xavier on 3 December and the Feast of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. Its calendar is closer to Portugal's than to Maharashtra's next door.
How Many Days Off a Worker Actually Gets
There is no national statutory minimum for paid public holidays in the private sector. The relevant law is the Shops and Establishments Act, which is state legislation, and the requirements differ accordingly.
Most state acts require between eight and fifteen paid holidays a year, usually specifying the three national days as compulsory and leaving the rest to the employer to select from a state-published list. The Factories Act of 1948 requires one day of rest per week and paid annual leave of one day per twenty worked.
In practice large private employers in India offer ten to twelve public holidays plus annual leave, and IT and multinational companies often operate a flexible model similar to the government's restricted holiday list.
Dry Days
A distinctively Indian feature of the holiday calendar is the dry day, on which the sale of alcohol is prohibited. The three national holidays are dry days across the country, and states add their own — Gandhi Jayanti universally, and Mahavir Jayanti, Ambedkar Jayanti, Guru Nanak Jayanti and Muharram in many states.
The number varies enormously. Gujarat and Bihar prohibit alcohol entirely; Maharashtra and Karnataka observe a dozen or more dry days; Goa observes very few.
Election days are also dry days, in the constituency concerned, for 48 hours before polling closes. In a country that runs elections almost continuously somewhere, that adds up.
The Holidays That Are Also Shutdowns
Some regional festivals close a state more completely than the national holidays do. Durga Puja effectively shuts West Bengal for five to seven days, with government offices, courts and most businesses closed and the entire population of Kolkata on the streets at night.
Onam in Kerala runs for four days of official holiday and around ten days of observance. Pongal in Tamil Nadu closes the state for four days in January. Ganesh Chaturthi brings Mumbai to a standstill for the immersion processions.
These are the events that actually determine when business can be done in India, and none of them appears on a list of national holidays. Anyone scheduling work across Indian states has to consult several calendars at once. For related context, see religion in India and the countries where Hindi is spoken.
