Building Bridges
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.
