CONGRESSMAN FROM INDIA

The first native of India to win a seat in Congress tells his story and sets forth his political beliefs. Beginning with a brief history of childhood in India, emigration, and advanced education at the University of California, he finally winds up with a wife and a farm in California's reclaimed Imperial Valley. Then politics and his Democratic Party take over. His reform judgeship, his much publicized contest with flyer Jacqueline Cochran Odlum for Congress in 1956, and his initiation into Washington follow. Finally he recount his 1957 trip to the Far East, where, as an Asian, he did much to bolster U.S. prestige. All of this is fairly interesting. His liberal views are admirable enough. But Saund is not a writer, nor is he a thinker in any deep sense. He skims over his material, offers platitudinous solutions to serious problems, and lacks entirely a sense of the dramatic.