Our past experiences can help us plan for the future. India’s Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav can be an occasion to take stock of a crucial aspect of independent India: the functioning of democracy. If the progress has been slow, we need to be pragmatic and modify the agenda for the future. Or we could consider exploring new aspects if there has been reasonable success in the past.

John Stuart Mill created a liberal doctrine that provided the basis for democracy. While he reluctantly included non-literates within the purview of liberalism in On Liberty, he rejected the premodern outright. Following his axiom, Indian voters, who are mainly non-literate and inhabit premodern aspects, fall outside the scope of liberalism and democracy. This was highlighted in Mill’s response to whether India should be free from British rule — “utterly out of the question,” he had said, according to Thomas Babington Macaulay.

Instead, for societies like India, Mill recommended ‘Despotism’ as a “legitimate mode of government… provided the end be their improvement.” “Liberty,” he held, “as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind has become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion. Until then, there is nothing for them but implicit obedience to an Akbar or a Charlemagne if they are so fortunate as to find one.”

According to Mill’s definition, India falls outside the cannons of liberalism. Despite this, the Indian, non-literate but “wise” — to use M.K. Gandhi’s reply to Aldous Huxley about his mother — voter has defied the cannon and sustained this modern, democratic form of governance for seventy-five years. This is indeed an achievement.

Voter participation has increased significantly over the years. The Election Commission of India has updated its infrastructure by incorporating EVMs. Parliament is witnessing more diverse representation and more transparency. Based on this successful experience from the past, India can now consider introducing new aspects. For instance, Indian voters can begin to focus on the true intention of candidates when they make promises before an election.

The nyaya school of philosophy considers the speaker’s intention as one of four conditions of Verbal Testimony, a source of knowledge. It is essential in ascertaining the meaning of a word or a sentence. The speaker’s intention is vital if a word has multiple meanings. For example, the word, ‘saindhava’, means both salt and horse. If one who is eating asks for saindhava, the other should not bring a horse but salt. Intention, as an essential condition in Indian epistemology, predates the importance of intentionality in Western philosophy. Intentionality, directed toward consciousness, gained prominence with the advent of phenomenology in Western philosophy, especially with Franz Brentano.

The electoral candidates’ intentions can be a guiding principle in scrutinising the nature of their promises during their election campaign. There can be a simple, yet often complex, relationship between intention and promise. For example, a promise can be empty, deceptive, yet enticing, or sincere. Depending on the consequences, a promise can be considered profitable and pragmatic. Away from the domain of consequences, we need to turn our attention towards the intention behind a promise. This will help us ascertain non-linear promises and distinguish between empty assurances and genuine ones.

By turning towards a candidate’s intention, the voter is turning towards the subject. Understanding the intention is undoubtedly not easy, though possible. Accessing this subjective domain and deciphering the underlying intentions behind promises can bring qualitative changes in governance. Consequently, the ability of voters to evaluate the nature; of the assurances provided by politicians can also encourage candidates to be more careful about making promises in bad faith. The enhancement of quality, in addition to increasing quantity by bringing more eligible voters into the electoral roll, can enrich parliamentary democracy.

Before moving ahead, it is necessary to reflect on whether Indian voters can effectively evaluate the candidates’ intentions. Or is this too idealistic to be true? Here it is essential to revisit the assumption made by Mill and others who assumed that literacy and modernity have a monopoly over competence. They did not consider any other faculty outside of these assumptions. Indian voters have, however, defied the cannon of liberalism and demonstrated their capacity to sustain the functioning of democracy in the country. They have instituted an alternative canon of liberalism and democracy other than what was proposed by the West. So now we have two forms of democracy: one that operates within the modern and the other that draws on human resources outside the modern.

Indian voters can not only successfully practice democracy but can also consider new variables, such as the candidate’s intentions when providing pre-election assurances. An important reason for considering a candidate’s intention is that a glibly phrased promise can be used to promote the candidate’s deceptive self-interest. Such misleading promises can derail good governance in the long run. It is imperative to safeguard our democracy from such potentially devastating consequences.

As we celebrate Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, we could evaluate our achievements over seventy-five years of India’s independence and use the findings as the base for future programs. This would not only enlarge the purview of democracy in India but also bring new dimensions into consideration, such as a fair appraisal of the intent behind promises made on the campaign trail. Revisiting nyaya gives us a better understanding of the nature and functioning of intention.

A. Raghuramaraju teaches Philosophy at the Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati