MODESTO, Calif. — Senator Clinton is proud that her ties with the Indian-American community once led to jokes that she could be elected as a senator from the Punjab in India, President Clinton told a fund-raising lunch here yesterday, according to guests.

About 200 people, many of them physicians of Indian origin, noshed on chicken tikka and other Indian specialties as they listened to Mr. Clinton argue for his wife’s continued viability in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The $1,000-a-head fund-raiser, which took place in the backyard of the home of an Indian-American oncologist, Amarjit Dhaliwal, was closed to the press, but after the lunch the former president opined on the source of the Indian community’s loyalty to Mrs. Clinton.

“First, she went there before I did when I was president and we effected a thaw in relations between the U.S. and India for the first time since President Kennedy was in office. It had been almost 40 years since we had really good relations with the Indians,” Mr. Clinton told The New York Sun as he shook hands with several dozen of Dr. Dhaliwal’s neighbors gathered on a cul de sac of large homes overlooking a sunny golf course. “She represents a lot of Indian Americans in New York. They like her and think she’s a good senator.”

Donors said Mr. Clinton was upbeat and made a strong case that Mrs. Clinton should not be counted out of the Democratic contest. “He created a lot of confidence in people that still Hillary is going to be the nominee,” a Fresno internist, Gurmejz Dhillon, said. “He’s wonderful. I told him, ‘You know, we still feel you are our president.'”

Dr. Dhillon said the Indian community’s affection for Mrs. Clinton is due in large part to a conviction that Mr. Clinton would still have influence at the White House. “It’s a plus point,” he said. Several guests said the former president said nothing negative about the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, Senator Obama. However, Mr. Clinton’s reference to his wife’s pride at being labeled as the senator from the Punjab alluded to a piece of opposition research Mr. Obama’s campaign circulated last year titled, “Hillary Clinton (D-Punjab)’s Personal Financial and Political Ties to India.” The memo noted that at a 2006 fund-raiser, Mrs. Clinton joined in a joke with one of her supporters about her electoral chances in the Indian province.

Mr. Obama apologized for the memo, which he called “stupid and caustic,” but Mr. Clinton has complained on the campaign trail that the press failed to castigate the Obama campaign over the attack.

Participants said yesterday’s crowd in Modesto hailed largely from the Punjab and many were Sikhs. Many of the men wore business suits and red Sikh turbans, while several women wore saris. Earlier yesterday, Mr. Clinton urged Democratic Party leaders in California not to press to bring the nominating contest to a premature conclusion out of concern that the exchanges between supporters of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama had become too damaging. “We are strengthening the Democratic Party. Chill out,” the former president said in a speech to 2,000 delegates attending the party’s annual convention in the Golden State. “This is a good thing.”

Mr. Clinton noted that when he clinched the Democratic nomination in 1992, he was running third in opinion polls behind President George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot, who was in first place at the time. “The fact that we have a vigorous debate in the Democratic primary, and that the Republicans were actively involved in it, I might add, actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise,” Mr. Clinton said.

Mr. Clinton’s visit to San Jose included a meeting with superdelegates, he told guests in Modesto later.

In his convention speech, the former president said his wife has the best plan to stem the economic damage from the home mortgage crisis. He said Americans who are in danger of foreclosure, even though many have never missed a payment, deserve at least as much help as the government has given to financial institutions jeopardized by the credit crisis.

“We are facing a financial meltdown,” Mr. Clinton said. “If this country can stop Bear Stearns from failure and let the Wall Street investment banks borrow money from the government, we ought to be able to save a million hardworking American families and their homes.”

The former president mentioned Mrs. Clinton’s plan to withdraw from Iraq, though he acknowledged that she would keep some troops there even after the bulk of the American military pulls out. “She would a leave a small special forces group up in the north where there’s no fighting, to be there in case Al Qaeda get out of hand,” Mr. Clinton said. “They do want to start a third war in the Middle East, and they want to make sure Israel and the Palestinians do not make peace, and she wants to make sure they can because that would take 50% of the energy out of terrorism.”

Mr. Clinton also made an impassioned plea to grant visas to Iraqis who aided American forces. “We owe it to the translators and the drivers who stuck their necks out for our kids to let them come home to America,” he said.