BUILDING BRIDGES THE ROLE OF INDIAN AMERICANS IN INDO-US RELATIONS

When Swadesh Chatterjee
arrived in the United States with his wife Manjusri and their baby daughter,
he had just $35 in his pocket. A decade and a half later, he was a successful
North Carolina businessman at the helm of a company, while Manjusri had a thriving
practice as a psychiatrist. They were well on their way to achieving the
American dream.Not satisfied with simply being an immigrant success story,
Chatterjee decided it was time to give back both to his adopted land and his
motherland. He took on a leading role in the burgeoning movement of Indian
Americans seeking a rapprochement between the United States and India after
decades of Cold War misunderstandings and resentment. Chatterjee helped shape
this movement and its strategy and in the process he developed a new playbook
for immigrant political empowerment. This memoir is a chronicle of the ups
and downs of that movement, a blueprint for younger Indian Americans and
other immigrant groups raising their voices in the United States and a deeply
personal family story.