V Kalyanam was Mahatma Gandhi's personal secretary during the last few years of his life. Even at 87, he is very active, getting up at four in the morning, and cleaning the surroundings. Gardening is his passion even today.
Kalyanam is now the President of a political party -- Desiya Paadukappu Kazhagam -- that has fielded two candidates in Chennai (Chennai South and Ccentral).
In this interview to rediff.com's Shobha Warrier, Kalyanam talks about Mahatma Gandhi and the current state of the country.
Why did you decide to start a political party?
This party was founded by M Kumar in 1996 to promote social causes. He has been doing a lot of reformatory work in the last 12 years. He is the man who has done the spade work to bring about the rule to declare the assets of all party candidates. Similarly, he has worked to keep criminals away. Nobody knows that he has done all this.
I was made the president recently because he wanted to bring Gandhian ideals into the party as Gandhi has been forgotten by all political parties. He also wanted to put up two candidates.
What is your involvement in the party?
I am the president now. I have been doing much more work than a Member of Parliament all these years without getting into politics. But the parliamentarians are not doing what they are supposed to do. I don't think anybody is doing any work. Gandhi wanted them to serve the villagers. Who has done that?
Your party's name suggests it will protect the people...
Yes, we want to protect people from the atrocities that are going on. That is why we entered politics. We want to set up a good standard in Parliament. Now, nobody behaves well there. They don't vacate their houses once their term is over. And the list is endless.
When other political parties spend crores of rupees on the election, what chance do you have?
We know money and muscle power play a major role but we are not bothered. We will do door to door campaign. If people are interested, let them elect our candidates. Or else, let them face the music.
You see family rule here, in Delhi, everywhere. People should understand that we are doing this for their good. We are not going to spend more than Rs three lakh on our two candidates.
Everybody talks about dynastic rule, corruption, etc but nobody does anything constructive...
Yes, everybody talks about corruption but what do you do to wipe it out? I see retired officers writing books condemning corruption and saying everything is wrong with the system. My question is, what were they doing when they were in power?
But this man, Kumar has been doing a lot of service to society, so also our candidate from South Chennai, Venkataraman. He does a lot of service to the disabled and the deprived. Impressed with his social work, I personally chose him.
Our Chennai Central candidate is Niranjan Kasturi, N Gopalaswami Iyengar's (defence minister and the advisor on Kashmir in Jawaharlal Nehru's cabinet) grandson. He was in the United States for 20 years. He came away from the US after he was injured in the 9/11 attack.
Do you feel people should look at social service as the first criterion while choosing a candidate?
What else is the job of the parliamentarians? They should serve the people. I don't want retired cricketers and film actors as MPs. Do they do any social service? They sign the papers, draw their salary and get a pension too. Gandhi said in (his newspaper) Harijan that MPs and MLAs should draw only Rs 500.
Do you feel the real Gandhi is forgotten in India? Now, the name Gandhi is synonymous with with Sonia Gandhi, Varun Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi etc! Nobody remembers the real Gandhi.
Gandhi was asked what he would do if he were a dictator. He said, in the first place, I would not like to be one. If I did, I would like to clean the Viceroy's house as there is so much of dirt there. Suppose he was a dictator now, this is what he would have done. He would have confiscated all the wealth amassed by politicians through wrong means in the last 60 years. Everybody is corrupt and you have family rule everywhere.
What do you think will happen to India?
I am sure it will become ungovernable in the due course of time. Criminals will take over and people will suffer.
In the last Lok Sabha elections, some idealistic young men formed a political party called Lok Paritran but they could not make any mark in the political scene....
Yes, they fizzled out.
How optimistic are you about your chances?
The question is how many people will vote for us? People are so lazy. The rich and the upper middle class are not bothered as they are well off. The middle class do only lip service. So, we are telling the people, this is a chance for you to make a change. If they don't do that, they will suffer.
Will you wind up the party if your candidates don't win the elections?
No. We will carry on in the next elections too. We are very confident to win if the 45 percent who never went out to vote, now decide to vote for us.
Photograph: Sreeram Selvaraj
