DALLAS — Two weeks after the close of the State Fair of Texas, with the smells of deep-fried Oreos and funnel cake still lingering in the air, 60,000 Indian-Americans from across the country are expected to descend on the same site this Saturday to observe Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights and one of India’s most important holidays.

Like the state fair, the annual event — known officially as the DFW Diwali Mela (for Dallas-Fort Worth) — is built around food and mounted on a scale worthy of Texas. Held in and around the Cotton Bowl, it is among the largest and grandest Diwali celebrations in the United States.

Dallas is not the most obvious setting. Though the city and its surrounding area have one of the nation’s largest Indian populations (108,000 in the 2010 census), the Chicago region’s is nearly twice that size, and the New York-New Jersey area’s is more than five times as large. The Dallas festival doesn’t even take place on Diwali (Oct. 19 this year) because the state fair is using the fairgrounds then.