Bobby Jindal

Jindal, Bobby, 1971–, American politician, b. Baton Rouge, La., as Piyush Jindal. The son of immigrants from India, he attended Brown Univ. (B.S., 1991) and thereafter was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford (M.Litt., 1994). He began his public career as secretary of the Louisiana Dept. of Health and Hospitals (1996–98) and was subsequently (1999–2001) president of the Univ. of Louisiana system. A conservative Republican, he was appointed assistant secretary in the Dept. of Health and Human Services by President George W. Bush and served there from 2001 to 2003. In 2003 he ran for governor of Louisiana and was defeated by Kathleen Blanco. Jindal was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2004 and reelected in 2006. In 2007 he soundly defeated a generally lackluster group of opponents to become America's first Indian-American governor and Louisiana's first nonwhite governor since Reconstruction.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.