 Like most rich farmers from Ba, he joined the Arya Samaj and was chosen by Vishnu Deo to contest the Northern & Western Division in the 1929 general elections, the first in which Indo-Fijians were allowed to vote.He won easily with the support of Deo and the Arya Samaj, an organisation to which most educated Fiji Indians belonged.However, two weeks after being sworn in he and the two other Indo-Fijians representatives resigned when a motion asking for equal political rights for Indo-Fijians was defeated.