When a leader is charismatic or agreeable enough to win over the hearts of enough people, it’s easy for that support to take on a character that almost seems like worship.
While it can happen despite that leader’s best intentions, there are also cases throughout history in which these figures have taken advantage to that reverence and built a cult of personality around themselves.
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For Joseph Stalin, for example, it wasn’t enough to be the Premier of the Soviet Union. He also had to be known as The Benevolent Friend of All Children, The Mountain Eagle, The Greatest Genius of All Times, and The Most Profound Theoretician of Contemporary Times, as well as other frankly ridiculous epithets.
But while this phenomenon often manifests itself the most in the country this leader has the most influence in, an unusual case from India shows it’s not impossible for others throughout the world to get swept up in the feeling.
37-year-old Bussa Krishna lives on his own in an undisclosed village in the Indian state of Telangana.
As The New York Post reported , his neighbors have taken to calling him “Trump Krishna” and refer to his house as “Trump House.”
To understand why, it helps to know that over the last four years, he has considered U.S. President Donald Trump his god.
As he put it, “Instead of praying to other gods, I started praying to him. My love for him has transformed into reverence.”
This apparently started when Trump appeared to him in a dream and inspired him to spend a month with 15 laborers he hired to build a statue of the president.
The statue, which is six feet tall and features Trump in his signature blue suit and red tie, has stood in his yard ever since.
As Krishna’s friend Ramesh Reddy said, “The villagers never objected to it but appreciated his devotion.”
And from the sounds of it, that devotion has involved some serious discipline on Krishna’s part.
As he said, “Every Friday I fast for Trump’s long life. I also carry his picture and pray to him before commencing any work.”
He has also expressed an intense desire to meet Trump during his state visit to India next week and has pleaded with the nation’s government to make his “dream come true.”
If it turns out that Krishna has to go himself, however, he’ll have quite some distance to travel.
As The New York Post reported , Trump is expected to start his visit in Ahmedabad, Gujarat on Monday, where he will visit the home of Mahatma Gandhi and speak to what is estimated to be a crowd of 125,000 people.
He will then travel to the nation’s capital of New Delhi by the next day. There’s no word on whether he has any plans to go as far south as Telangana.
h/t: The New York Post
