Bhargava's Journey from Livingston to the White House

Anju Bhargava's interest in community affairs started in simple fashion.

"It started when my daughter was a year and a half old and we had just moved to Livingston," she recalled on a recent day. "She asked me, 'Why do I look different?'"

Her daughter's innocent question sparked Bhargava's own curiosity.

"I started asking, what's the process, how do Americans see us?" she said.

Her daughter's curiosity inspired her to seek answers, a mission that has since brought her to the White House during three presidencies, earned her a fellowship under the Clinton administration and, most recently, an honorary appointment to President Obama's 25-member panel on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

"I've had the opportunity to learn and see firsthand how America functions at the grassroots level; how open it is to acceptance," she said.

The overriding message that she passes along is one of acceptance. She helps fellow Indian women living in America understand what she has learned.

"If you believe everything media says, you believe there is a lot of prejudice, but by and large people in America are quite good. There is a genuine sense of goodness and wanting to do the right thing, especially living in this town," she continued.

Her extensive involvement over the past 20 years has warranted her several personal meetings with President Obama, as well as visits with President Reagan, President Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and countless state politicians in New Jersey and New York.

Her first meeting with President Obama came at the White House's first official Diwali celebration, hosted on October 15, 2009. What is the President like in person?

"Oh my god, he's so tall, dark and handsome!" she said, sounding like she has a school girl crush. "It was like, I can't believe it, that I am meeting the President, that I am meeting the President in the East Room of the White House." She was initially at a loss for words, but soon recovered her cool. By her next meeting, she and the President bantered like old friends.

"He's very personable," she added. "He's really interested in what you have to say, and he remembers things and processes them very fast. He's smart, definitely."

She was able to keep her composure, in part, because it was not her first visit with a U.S. President. She was invited to the White House by President Ronald Reagen in the 1980s, when he recognized Asian Indian Women in America as an organization.

But it all stated on the local stage, in Livingston.

Bhargava set about helping her daughter and fellow Indian-American women understand how they fit into American society. She started by establishing Asian Indian Women in America in 1981. By 1984, she had formed Asian Indians in Livingston, and the organization were invited to march in Livingston's Memorial Day Parade.  She recently wrote about that experience for a column in the Washington Post. 

"Livingston opened the door for me to see how accepting it is, how we can integrate. By and large, the community was pretty open. Specifically, when anything happened there would be many people in this town who would be always there to step in," she said.

In addition to her work in Livingston, the community leader started a networking group for fellow Indians working in New York.

"It was very interesting to see how the immigration impacted us, from our background, what worked, what didn't work," she recalled.

In the mid-90s, she became more involved in the Livingston inter-faith scene.

"I met Jean Brown, and she pushed me and said you should be part of the inter-faith service. There should be a Hindu representative. She was very interested in Eastern culture," she explained.

Bhargava credits the inter-faith organization with her understanding of the way different communities within town live together.

In 1998, Bhargava applied for a community builder fellowship under the Clinton administrion. She never expected to earn the post, but says that, "by the grace of God, I was the only Indian-American to be selected."

Throughout her fellowship, she focused on relations between all communities, not solely the needs of Indians in America. She helped make Martin Luther King Day a holiday in Livingston, celebrated for the first time 11 years ago.

After the two-year fellowship concluded, Bhargava returned to the corporate banking world. All the while, she was searching for answers to philosophical questions.

"I wanted to know, to understand, what does it mean to be different and the same, and all that. I really wanted to understand," she said.

In 2008, she found herself "in transition," a result of the tumbling economic situation in the banking world. She seized the opportunity to further spread her net.

"Around the time I realized that a new wave [of Indians] that came in the 1990s and 2000s needed to go through the same process that we went through." In an effort to help them adapt to American society, Bhargava re-started Asian Indians in Livingston co-founded the Indian School in Livingston.

On a whim, she also applied for a position in the Obama Administration. Ever-so-modest, she said she was surprised to learn that she was awarded a presidential appointment, in April of 2009.

"I needed to keep my mind occupied and stop thinking the world is crashing around me," she said. "The whole community thing is something positive, something creative."

As a member of the panel, she has helped create a Hindu charity organization called Hindu American Seva Charities that is similar in model to Catholic Charities, and focuses on integration.

"The social service aspect of the Christian and Jewish communities, it is different from the eastern tradition," she explained. "Our infrastructure is different. We don't have those kind of outlets to reach the community but there is a need for it in the American context."

And so, with the help of Catholic Charities leaders, Bhargava has created an umbrella organization, "to try to bring the community together and engage the community more in civic engagement."

She said Hindu American Seva Charities has helped the American-born children find what other faith based organizations offer. "That reduces barriers, when the interfaith organizations work together," she added. "This has been my passion, how to work with people and how to integrate, I'm always the different one, but I'm okay with that."

Through it all, she credits her American home with getting her started. She has always felt welcome here, always felt included.

"That's something that we need to nurture in America, that is a very good American value, of acceptance and inclusion," she continued.

"From a community living perspective, Livingston has provided me with roots, in an American context. I've grown as my daughter has grown, and I've learned the process. I'm just very grateful that I've had all of these different experience and the opportunity to do things about it."

*This article has been updated.