Howdy, Hanuman! In Texas, Statue of Union meets politics of division

TOI correspondent from Washington: Everything is supposed to be bigger in Texas, a state where cats are the size of dogs, dogs are the size of European cars, where you can fit two Germanys and 20 Belgiums – or 158 of the world’s smaller countries – into it.But apparently, Texas’s Christian conservatives are not capacious enough to accommodate a large – very large – statue of Hanuman.Amid an uprush of "Hanumania" in India following a Hanuman Ansh movie documenting the life of the mystic Neem Karoli Baba, the largest state in contiguous America has been witnessing a blazing row over a 90-foot Hanuman statue towering over the Sri Ashtalakshmi Temple in Sugar Land outside Houston.Conceived as a monument to strength, devotion, and unity by local Hindu groups, and officially called the Statue of the Union, the icon has become an unlikely lightning rod in Texas’ increasingly heated argument over immigration,…