He joined the immigration department as a clerk in 1918, taught at a school established by M. N. Naidu in Lautoka in the early 1920s,[2] and started his own importing and exporting agency in 1927.

While there was an official ceremony and floats through Suva, Vishnu Deo and his associates displayed a black flag and burned the indenture system in effigy.

Deo was sworn into the Legislative Council on 25 October 1929, and on 5 November moved a motion calling for common roll franchise.

[citation needed] During the Second World War, Vishnu Deo advised Indo-Fijians to enlist in the Indian Platoon only if they were paid the same wages as Europeans.

He took a proactive role in propagating the teachings of Swami Dayanand, some of which were the establishment of a castless society, education for girls, an end to child marriage and remarriage for widows.

He soon found himself at loggerheads with other religious groups, who for the first time had to deal with a Hindu society aggressively promoting re-conversion to Hinduism.

Although ineligible to contest the 1932 elections due to his earlier conviction, Vishnu Deo won the Southern Division seven times between 1937 and 1959.

During his final years of public service, Deo no longer displayed his firebrand characteristics of the 1920s and 1930s, but instead had mellowed and became beloved and respected by all sections of Fiji's population.

In the selection of Vishnu Deo, the Indian members displayed remarkable unity as reported by the Fiji Times (10/10/1956): The appointment of Mr. Pdt.