The anti-India and anti-Hindu sentiments are soaring across the United States, with increasing episodes of targeted violence. In the latest case, a Hindu man in Texas was forced to remove Ganesha murti from his home as realtor claims that the Hindu imagery in the house made it difficult to sell the property. This illustrates how intolerance to cultural practices and belief systems is escalating in the democratic and a developed country.
An Indian man in Texas was forced to remove a Ganesha idol from his home after a realtor told him that Hindu religious imagery made his home harder to sell amid rising anti-Indian sentiment pic.twitter.com/zNNtnSvox3
— Shashank Mattoo (@MattooShashank) June 22, 2026
Bloomberg reported that the harsher immigration and visa policies of the Trump administration has triggered the row in Texas, targeting the Hindu man. Bloomberg reported that post the modified visa rules and crackdown on the immigrant employees, more than 20 companies moved their base from California to Texas. The companies are shifted to the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area.
These companies have a major proportion of South Asian and Indian employees, who have immigrated on the H1B visa. They have now shifted to the regions around Texas. Thus, the section of the radical, conservative American population are intolerant to this skilled immigrant population, leading to targeted violence.
In the latest row, the Indian man named Ravi Vavilala who resides in the Celina region of Texas, was forced to remove Ganesh murti from his house. Ravi Vavilala and his family moved to Texas from Charlotte, North Carolina in 2023. The Celina area in Texas has a considerable Indian population and it is growing as well. Ravi Vavlava also said that a few months after moving to Texas, he was diagnosed with stage four cancer. As an impact of his deteriorating health, he lost his job as well. Thus, the family decided to sell the house they were residing in since 2023 in Texas.
However, selling the house turned out to be a herculean task, Ravi Vavlava further explained. When a buyer visited the house they left the place within 5 minutes. When Ravi Vavlava contacted the realtor to find out the reason, he was informed that the buyers felt uncomfortable or not convincing as they found Ganesha murti placed in the house.
“We felt a little uncomfortable because they were saying that there is so much religious stuff and personal stuff still there. We realised that we have to make our home very generic to attract all kinds of people”, Ravi Vavalva further said to private media platforms. Thus, the family had to inevitably shift the Ganesha murti to the storage unit. Thus, the soaring anti-India and anti-Hindu sentiments in the United States, which is being further fuelled by the anti-immigrant policies of President Donald Trump, is adversely impacting the lives of the Indian and Hindu American community.
