Rep. Dalip Singh Saund, right, with John F. Kennedy.

Though one should not draw too many parallels, the Bobby Jindal victory cannot help but bring to mind the first-ever Indian American to win a seat in the United States Congress way back in 1956. Dalip Singh Saund, then a 57-year-old lettuce farmer-turned-politician, made history that Jindal now treads on. In fact, Saund was not just the first Indian American, he was the first Asian ever to come to Congress.

Thousands of Indians came and settled on the West Coast of the U.S. and Canada in the early 1900s, they achieved many things and contributed much to American life, but none reached where Saund did.

Saund with his wife Marian Kosa. (Photo, as they appear on www.aaa-fund.org)

Starting in much harder times, but with a similar brilliance displayed by the much younger Jindal, Saund accumulated educational honors and ran for public office when the country was not as multi-ethnic as it is today. And in doing so, Saund provided the strength to Indian Americans who may be faint of heart when it comes to politics.

When Jindal enters Congress, he might keep in his hand, ‘The Biographical Directory of the United States Congress’ which gives a distilled history of his predecessor, the first Indian American ever to set foot in the halls of Congress. It does not need much embellishment to read between the lines of the history of a man who broke so many boundaries to be a public servant in his adopted country.

Saund, Representative from California who was elected to Congress in 1956, was born in the village of Chhajulwadi in Punjab on Sept. 20, 1899. He was educated in boarding schools, graduated from the University of Punjab in 1919, and came to the United States in 1920 to attend the University of California.

He got a Masters in 1922 and went on to do his Ph.D. Saund then became a lettuce farmer in the Imperial Valley of California from 1930-1953. He also became a distributor of chemical fertilizer in Westmoreland, Calif., in 1953.

But farming was not his only calling. He became a U.S. citizen in 1949, and within a year he was elected judge of Justice Court, Westmoreland Judicial District, County of Imperial, but only to be denied the seat because he had not even completed one year of citizenship when elected. That did not faze him. He got elected judge of the same court in 1952 and served until until he moved to Washington as a congressman in 1957.

Extraordinary for his times, Saund was a delegate to Democratic National Conventions in 1952, 1956, and 1960. He also ran for and was elected as a Democrat from California 29th District to the Eighty-fifth and to the two succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1957-January 3, 1963).

He was unsuccessful in his 1962 race for re-election because he suffered a stroke during the campaign and remained an invalid until he passed away on April 22, 1973, in Hollywood, California. He was buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Glendale, California. As one PBS documentary on Saund says, there’s no telling how far he would have risen in public service if his life had not been cut short so suddenly.