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All India Hyderabad Visa Balaji Temple

Visa Balaji Temple

A centuries-old shrine where Indians pray for U.S. visas.

Hyderabad, India

Added By
Meg Neal
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Statues at the front gate of the temple depict the unearthing of the god’s image from the anthill.   Tim Williams/Atlas Obscura
Statues at the front gate of the temple depict the unearthing of the god’s image from the anthill.   Tim Williams/Atlas Obscura
The gate to the temple.   Tim Williams/Atlas Obscura
A statue at the Chilkur Balaji Temple   Ritu Manoj Jethani/shutterstock.com
A pink chit is used to mark each lap around the temple.   Michael Schulson/Atlas Obscura
Lining up at the temple.   Ritu Manoj Jethani/shutterstock.com
Looking in through the gate.   Tim Williams/Atlas Obscura
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About

Every year, thousands of pilgrims travel to a small temple in the Indian village of Chilkur to ask for United States visas.

In a shady courtyard, they circumambulate a shrine 11 times. Those who receive their visas come back and make 108 more circuits, marking each lap on a pink chit and leaving bundles of holy basil in front of the god’s image.

It’s not just visas: Visitors to Chilkur Balaji Temple—commonly known as "Visa Balaji Temple''—also ask for spouses, children, property, and even government postings. (According to a priest there, a minister came and made 108 grateful circuits shortly after getting his job.) But immigration documents have become the temple’s signature wish. Around the shrine to Balaji—an incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu—tradition mixes with globalization, and the bureaucratic and the divine intersect.

At first glance, Chilkur is an unlikely place for a booming Vishnu shrine with a national reputation. It is an unremarkable agricultural village on the western edge of Hyderabad, a city with a significant Muslim minority. The area is better known for its mosques than its Hindu temples.   

But Hyderabad is also an emerging hub of India’s tech industry. Dell, Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Amazon all have major offices there. Hyderabad is a college town, too, with a number of big engineering schools. A 2014 Brookings Institution report found that the city sends more people to study in the United States than Delhi and Mumbai combined, and more than almost any other city in the world.

In other words, it’s a hotbed of ambitious young people who may be looking for F-1 (student) and H-1B (skilled employment) visas to the United States. And there, right in the neighborhood, sits a temple with a reputation for granting wishes.

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Temples Shrines Immigration Hinduism
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Added By

Meg

Published

September 20, 2016

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  • http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-centuriesold-shrine-where-indians-pray-for-us-visas
Visa Balaji Temple
Chilkur Village
Hyderabad
India
17.358333, 78.298611
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