Bobby Jindal sworn in as governor of Louisiana

January 15, 2008 Piyush "Bobby" Jindal was inaugurated on Monday as governor of the U.S. state of Louisiana. He is the country's first Indian American elected governor and the first non-white governor of Louisiana since P. B. S. Pinchback in 1872. At 36 years old, he is currently the nation's youngest governor as well. Jindal succeeds Kathleen Blanco as the state governor.

The inauguration ceremony was held at the state capitol in Baton Rouge. In a speech, Jindal vowed to put an end to political corruption in the state and speed up recovery from the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season.

"We must win a war on corruption and incompetence in government," said Jindal.

Jindal was serving a second term in the House of Representatives when he was elected last October. He previously served as the head of Louisiana's Department of Health and Hospitals, a post to which he was appointed at the age of 24. A year earlier, he had graduated from University of Oxford as a Rhodes scholar.

Jindal is the son of Punjabi immigrants who came to Baton Rouge shortly before his birth. As a teenager, he converted from Hinduism to Catholicism. He takes his nickname from the character Bobby on television's The Brady Bunch.