WASHINGTON: It was a grassroot campaign by Indian-Americans, who literally flooded their lawmakers with emails, letters and faxes, that saw the Indo-U.S. civil nuclear agreement pass through the Congress, says a new book on the unprecedented coming together of the community for the deal.

Leading Indian-American entrepreneur and activist Swadesh Chatterjee in his book 'Building Bridges: How Indian-Americans Brought the United States and India Closer Together', provides a first-hand account of the involvement of the influential community in getting the deal through the U.S. Congress.

"The Indian government hired high-powered and high-priced lobbyists to press their case, but it was really the Indian-American community that took the lead in the campaign for civil nuclear agreement," writes Chatterjee.

The book hit the stores in the U.S. this week while its Indian edition is expected to be released later this year.

"Swadesh, you are wasting your time," the then powerful Congressman, Gary Ackerman, a leading lawmaker of the House Caucus on India and Indian Americans told him, when he went and met him and sought his support.

"This deal is dead on arrival," Ackerman told Chatterjee, according to the book.

"There were few takers for the bill," Chatterjee told PTI here.

"But we were determined to get the bill through the Congress. This we strongly felt was in the best interest of both India and the U.S.. We believed that this was the golden opportunity for the two countries to come together," Chatterjee said.

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Source: PTI