After Naperville’s India Day celebration received no funding this year from a city commission, the Naperville City Council is scrambling to find money to keep the annual celebration alive in the city.
The event, which typically includes a parade and a festival, has brought large crowds to Naperville for years in what organizers say is one of the largest celebrations of Indian culture in the country.
Organized by the nonprofit Indian Community Outreach, the event commemorates Aug. 15, 1947, the day India won its freedom from British rule. Naperville started hosting the event about a decade ago as part of a collaboration between Indian Community Outreach and former Mayor Arthur George Pradel, according to Indian Community Outreach Chairman and CEO Krishna Bansal.
Both India Day and the broader creation of Indian Community Outreach were meant to help Naperville’s Indian community feel more integrated in city life. According to a 2023 survey done by the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 37,000 Naperville residents identified as Asian, or about a fourth of the city’s population. Of that number, the majority — an estimated 22,000 — identified as Indian.
“This event has not only grown as one of the largest Indian American events in the country, it got Naperville a kind of prestige with the ethnic groups,” said Bansal, emphasizing all the Indian-owned businesses that have moved into the city in the years that followed.
In the past, organizers have received financial support from the city’s special events and community arts commission, or SECA for short. But this year, SECA commissioners denied Indian Community Outreach’s funding request, citing a lack of clarity around the organization’s $398,503 funding request and concerns over whether the event would take place after it was canceled last year due to tightened security requirements.
Some SECA commissioners also said that they had tried to reach out to Indian Community Outreach for clarification on the organization’s funding request but received no response from the organization. Bansal said that he was never contacted by the commission.
While Bansal said he wants to keep India Day in Naperville, a lack of city funding may force him to move the event to another city. He said he is currently in talks with other cities about moving India Day out of Naperville, although he declined to share Tuesday night who he is currently talking with.
“Losing India Day would not only mean losing a festival, it would mean losing one of the few large scale events that brings together many people from different parts of our community, and shifting those social and economic benefits away from Naperville should not be something that we should consider,” said Viral Shah, treasurer for Indian Community Outreach.
But Tuesday night, City Council members said they wanted to see India Day thrive in Naperville again and do whatever they could to make sure that happens.
“I would like this event to happen. It’s the biggest celebration of Indian culture that I know of, obviously in Naperville, but maybe in the area, celebrating the culture of our largest immigrant community in Naperville,” said Councilman Josh McBroom. “I think we need to do everything we can to make this event happen this year.”
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Councilman Patrick Kelly concurred, noting that Naperville has lost a number of major events in recent years, including the cancellation of the Naperville Salute last year and the end of Naperville Ribfest two years ago.
Earlier this year, the Rotary Club of Naperville canceled the city’s Holiday Parade of Lights, which has been a staple tradition in downtown Naperville for more than two decades. The 4th annual Chicagoland Halal Fest, which typically draws thousands to Naperville’s Frontier Park, is moving to College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn this year due to a lack of nearby parking.
At the same time, Kelly cautioned that looking into ways to fund India Day at this point could set a dangerous precedent for organizations that are denied SECA funding in the future. Each year, commissioners review dozens of SECA applicants and then recommend a funding amount for each applicant. Council approves the final list.
“If we go through the city commission process and then go through the council review process, and then after that entire process is done in two stages, we kind of piecemeal select one or more events to give reconsideration to, I think that’s just a potentially dangerous road for us to go down where there could be lobbying,” Kelly said.
After Tuesday night’s meeting, Bansal seemed skeptical about India Day’s future in Naperville. Despite the council’s determination to keep the event in the city, he emphasized that he is running out of time.
“It’s very disheartening and very sad the way things have moved in. I’ve given everything to the city as a volunteer,” Bansal said. “Council people, no one is going to oppose it on the dais. I know that it’s going to be a very bad look. It’ll look bad for them to do. But will this move fast enough? Will something happen? I don’t know.”