WASHINGTON, 9 November 2004 — Indian-American Piyush ‘Bobby’ Jindal won his bid last week to become a US congressman.

In doing so, he became the second person of Indian origin ever to be elected to the US House of Representatives. Californian Dalip Singh Saund was the only other Indian-American elected to the US Congress in 1956, and served three two-year terms.

Jindal bounced back from a failed attempt last year to become governor of Louisiana, and gained national attention in his run for congressman. He won almost 78 percent of the votes by drubbing his nearest rival, Democrat Roy Armstrong, who polled 7 percent.

Jindal, 33, born Piyush, is the son of Amar and Raj Jindal who emigrated from the Punjab, in northern India, when the Jalandhar residents came to the United States in the late 1960s to pursue their academic careers. His father took a job as an engineer at Exxon so that Bobby’s mother could earn a degree in nuclear physics at Louisiana State University.

Born, raised and schooled in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a young Piyush adopted the name “Bobby” at the age of four, after a likeable character from the TV serial “The Brady Brunch.”

Raised a Hindu but converted to Catholicism while attending Brown University, he was admitted to medical school but dropped plans to be a doctor to when he won a Rhodes scholarship. Jindal decided against attending Harvard and Yale for two years of postgraduate work at Oxford, where he specialized in public policy. He returned to the US to work as a consultant for McKinsey and Co.

His academic background in health care administration impressed Louisana Gov. Mike Foster, who named him to head the state’s $4 billion Department of Health and Hospitals. Jindal imposed budget discipline and rooted out so much fraud that he was able to turn the state’s $400 million Medicaid deficit into a surplus.

His management skills attracted Washington’s attention — and President George W. Bush. In July 2001, he became assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, making him the highest-ranking Indian-American in the US government.

Jindal’s reputation as a fast-talking, quick-thinking politician marks him out as one of the most promising stars in the congressional line-up.

Political supporters say he is the Republican Party’s equal to Barack Obama, the newly elected Democratic African-American senator (of Kenyan origin) from Illinois who is the toast of the America’s center-left political junkies.

The candidate confounded experts who predicted he would never make it past the primary. “What he’s done so far has been amazing,” says Wayne Parent, a political scientist at Louisiana State University.

His rise in Louisiana, the Deep South, and Republican Party ranks was fuelled by an archconservative stance that belies his roots. He is anti-abortion, pro-gun, anti-gay marriage, pro-school prayer.

Jindal also scored points by touting his political inexperience: “I’m not a politician, I’m a problem solver.” And his impressive machine-gun like recitations of how he would shake up state government and attract industry helped him shine during candidate debates.

“He’s a smart conservative with an unusual background. He has an exotic quality that appeals to people,” said Michael Barone, author of the Almanac of American Politics. “If he were a left-wing candidate who was dark-skinned he wouldn’t have had a prayer.”

The New Orleans Times-Picayune, the state’s leading newspaper, endorsed him by saying “Mr. Jindal possesses keen intelligence, boundless energy, a knack for winning people over and getting things done. To meet him is to be impressed.”

Some 1.67 million people of Indian descent live in the United States, 8,200 of them in Louisiana.

Bobby Jindal is married to Supriya Jolly, whose family hails from Delhi’s West Patel Nagar.