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Bobby Jindal elected
Louisiana governor
WSN Network
 Washington:
A full century after the first Indian immigrants to the US were
driven out of the country after what came to be known as the
Bellingham riots, a conservative American state has elected an
Indian-American as governor.
Bobby Jindal, the 36-year-old US-born son of Indian immigrants, won
more than 50% of the primary votes in a field of 12 candidates to
break a host of records, including becoming the first
Indian-American to hold governor’s office.
Jindal will also become the youngest current governor in the country
when he is sworn into office in January, and the first member of an
ethnic minority to become the chief executive of a historic state
that, when purchased by Thomas Jefferson from Napoleon in 1803 for
$15 million nearly doubled the size of the US and gave birth to 15
other states.
Jindal’s election marks a high-point in the history of Indian
immigration to America, which began at the turn of the 19th century.
The first regular immigrants from Punjab reached British Columbia
and the Pacific northwest and moved down south to California, which
would eventually elect the first Indian-American – Dalip Singh Saund
— to Congress in 1956. Jindal became only the second person of
Indian origin to be elected to Congress — from Louisiana — in 2004.
In 1907, racist mobs rioted against “Hindus” (they even called the
Sikhs that) in the town of Bellingham in Washington state, causing
many to flee the country and staunched immigration for a while.
Today, the state, home to Microsoft and Boeing, has a well-settled
Indian immigrant population.
Louisiana, in the deep south, is of different timbre in a different
corner of the country, which makes Jindal’s election all the more
remarkable.
24 October, 2007
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