As US President Donald Trump prepares for his first visit to India, one man is ready to welcome him with open arms. Bussa Krishna, age 33, literally worships Trump, going so far to erect a six-foot statue of the reality-TV-star-turned-politician outside his home for devotional purposes.
“It took almost a month and 15 laborers to build this statue,” Krishna told Asian News International, an Indian news agency. “[Trump] is like a God to me, that is the reason I had his statue built.”
The statue depicts Trump in a blue suit with a red tie, right hand raised in a signature thumbs up. As in common in depictions of Hindu gods in art, Trump has pink skin, accentuated by applications of bright red sindoor powder on the statue’s forehead (a Hindu religious mark known as a tilak).
Krishna, who lives in the village of Konne in Telengana, near Hyderabad, makes offerings at the custom shrine every day, in a bizarre take on Hinduism’s traditional puja prayer ritual. He began the practice four years ago, after Trump allegedly appeared to him in a dream.
Bussa Krishna prays to his statue of President Donald Trump. Photo by Noah Seelam/AFP/Getty Images.
His family does not approve. “I am facing difficulties because of my relatives,” Krishna told Reuters. “They tell me that I am disgracing them in society. I told them that just like you believe and worship Shiva, I believe and worship Trump.”
Krishna’s devotion to the US president first made headlines in 2018. Back then, he restricted himself to a small shrine featuring Trump’s photograph. Now, in addition to the statue, he has written Trump’s last name over and over again on the walls surrounding his property.
Bussa Krishna performing a ritual with his statue of Trump. Photo by Noah Seelam/AFP/Getty Images.
The statue is part of a small but growing tradition of outlandish Outsider art dedicated to the president. In Staten Island, artist Scott LoBaido erected a giant “T” statue in Trump’s honor ahead of the 2016 election. A strange wooden statue of what appeared to be Trump in the style of the Statue of Liberty appeared in a Slovenian village.
Both works were burned to the ground by those who hate the controversial president. (LoBaido quickly rebuilt a second, larger version.) Melania Trump, meanwhile, got her own chainsaw sculpture in her native Slovenia.
Trump will arrive in India for a two-day trip on February 24, and Krishna is hopeful he’ll have the chance to come face-to-face with his idol.
“I wish to meet him, I request the government to make my dream come true,” said Krishna to ANI.
See more photos of Krishna at his Trump shrine below.
Photo by Noah Seelam/AFP/Getty Images.
Photo by Noah Seelam/AFP/Getty Images.
Photo by Noah Seelam/AFP/Getty Images.