The former Chief Minister and senior BJP leader S.M. Krishna had two prescriptions for the socio-political health of the country — fighting the role of money in politics and starting a new chapter of harmonious public discourse with no room for abuse.
He was speaking here on Saturday at an event that saw six books on his life, collectively called ‘Krishna Patha’, released.
On the role of money in public life, he said, “Just because there are elections and people vote, it does not mean there is a genuine, functional democracy. As long as politics is unduly influenced by money, there is no genuine democracy in our country. The youth of this country should give this a thought and try to sort this out.”
Responding to many describing him as a “gentleman politician”, he said he had never tried to seek revenge or vengeance against anybody. He also appealed for a clean public discourse that inculcates mutual respect and harmony and with no room for abuse.
The former Chief Justice of India M.N. Venkatachaliah, who led the ‘Krishna Patha’ committee, said he accepted the job as the exercise was not merely about Mr. Krishna, but an exploration of how leadership was intricately connected with the life of a democracy. Giving several examples of authoritarianism that came through democracy, including Hitler, he said the popular vote was a phantom. “Mr. Krishna is only a metaphor for the kind of leadership, its cultural components, which we should look forward to,” he said.
Commenting on leadership, Mr. Krishna said it was the challenges that make man a leader and that he faced many of them while in power and out of it too. He recalled how he faced forest brigand Veerappan kidnapping matinee idol Rajkumar, and termed it as one of the biggest challenges he had faced.
Leaders cutting across political parties, including D.K. Shivakumar and B.L. Shankar from the Congress and C.N. Ashwath Narayan from the BJP, were part of the event.
