(RNS) — Days after U.S. President Donald Trump announced his most recent executive order, one that would raise the application fee for H-1B visa hopefuls to $100,000 from $10,000, Indian immigrants, who make up the bulk of recipients of the H-1B visas, noticed a spike in anti-Indian rhetoric on social media. Curiously, some posts leveled their outrage at a 90-foot-tall bronze cast of a Hindu deity that has stood outside Houston for more than a year.
“Why are we allowing a false statue of a false Hindu God to be here in Texas?,” wrote a Republican congressional hopeful in Texas in a popular X post on Monday (Sept. 22). “We are a CHRISTIAN nation!”
The statue the candidate, Alexander Duncan, referred to is a bronze cast of Hanuman, the divine monkey who is recognized in the Hindu pantheon as a symbol of protection and courage. The fourth-largest statue in the United States, the “Statue of Union” was erected outside of the Sri Ashta Lakshmi temple in Sugar Land, Texas, last August. Shortly afterward, a group of about 25 Christian protesters circled the statue for hours, praying and preaching against the “demon god.”
Shrinivasachary Tamirisa, a retired gynecologist and founder of the temple, said Hindu culture teaches knowledge in response to ignorance. Tamirisa said he was not upset by the …