India’s Constitution Is Too Easy to Amend
- BerryBeat Team
- 3 days ago
- 10 min read
The United States Constitution has been amended 27 times in 235 years. India’s Constitution has been amended 106 times in 76 years.
That comparison is not perfect. India’s Constitution is longer, more detailed, more socially ambitious, and more administratively dense. It began life not merely as a charter of restrained government, but as a blueprint for a broken society to remake itself after Partition, caste hierarchy, colonial rule, and economic deprivation.
Still, the contrast is impossible to ignore.
A constitution is meant to sit above ordinary politics. It should slow power down. It should force governments to justify themselves. It should protect citizens when elected majorities become impatient, angry, insecure, or overconfident.
India’s amendment history tells a more troubling story. Amendments have not merely corrected technical defects or expanded rights. They have often operated as instruments of political management, judicial avoidance, emergency consolidation, and electoral calculation.
The question is no longer whether India’s Constitution can adapt. It plainly can. The question is whether it adapts too easily, and whether that ease has slowly trained governments to treat constitutional change as another item on the legislative agenda.
Amendment frequency is not just a number
Amendment counts can mislead if treated carelessly. India and the United States are different constitutional projects.
The US Constitution is short and old. It leaves enormous room for courts, conventions, federal practice, and political bargaining. India’s Constitution is long and specific. It contains rules on elections, services, emergency powers, language, reservations, local government, property, federal relations, and institutions. A detailed document will naturally require more amendments than a sparse one.
That is the strongest defence of India’s 106 amendments. It deserves to be taken seriously.
But it does not settle the matter.
The deeper concern is not simply that India has amended its Constitution often. It is that Parliament has sometimes amended it in response to court rulings it disliked, political crises it wanted to control, or electoral bargains it wanted to formalise. Constitutional amendment in India has often been both legal and strategic. It has been an instrument of statecraft.
The Wire, in a May 2026 analysis, described the record as “often marked by episodes of disquieting legislative haste, even in matters of profound constitutional consequence.” That phrase matters because speed is not a neutral fact in constitutional law. Speed can mean urgency. It can also mean avoidance of scrutiny.
The 67th Constitutional Amendment is the sharpest example. It extended President’s Rule in Punjab and was introduced in the Lok Sabha, passed by both Houses, and received presidential assent on the same day, 4 October 1990. That is a stunning constitutional timeline.
A same-day amendment may be formally valid. It may even be politically defensible in a crisis. But a constitution should not be so easy to move that the distance between introduction, debate, passage, and assent collapses into a single day.
That is not deliberation. That is velocity.
The First Amendment set the template for constitutional escape
India’s First Amendment came in 1951, barely a year after the Constitution came into force. That fact alone should make us pause.
The amendment did several things, but its most enduring move was the creation of the Ninth Schedule. The original purpose was to protect land reform laws from being struck down by courts. In the early Republic, this had a powerful moral and political justification. Land reform was tied to the promise of social justice. Zamindari abolition was not a minor administrative project. It was central to the postcolonial state’s claim that democracy would change material life.
Yet the device chosen was radical.
The Ninth Schedule placed specified laws in a constitutional shelter. The original list contained 13 laws. Over time, that number grew to 284. Each addition represented Parliament’s claim that certain legislation deserved protection from ordinary judicial scrutiny.
This is where the amendment story becomes larger than land reform. A tool designed for redistribution became a template for insulating state action from courts.
To be precise, the Ninth Schedule is not the absolute fortress it was once imagined to be. In the I.R. Coelho judgment of 2007, the Supreme Court held that laws placed in the Ninth Schedule after 24 April 1973 could still be reviewed if they damaged the Basic Structure of the Constitution. That date matters because it is the date of the Kesavananda Bharati judgment.
Even with that correction, the political meaning of the Ninth Schedule remains serious. For decades, Parliament used constitutional amendment not merely to change the Constitution, but to change the relationship between law and review.
That is the heart of the problem.
A constitution can authorise Parliament to legislate. It can also allow Parliament to amend. But when the amendment power becomes a method to shield legislation from scrutiny, constitutionalism begins to bend. The government is no longer only making law. It is deciding how much judicial resistance that law should face.
The 42nd Amendment showed how far the amendment power could go
If the First Amendment showed the method, the 42nd Amendment showed the danger.
Passed in 1976 during the Emergency, the 42nd Amendment made sweeping changes to the Constitution. The Supreme Court later described it as among the most far-reaching constitutional changes ever made. It extended the term of the Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assemblies from five to six years, curtailed judicial review, strengthened central authority, altered the balance between Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles, and attempted to make constitutional amendments beyond challenge.
This was not ordinary reform. It was constitutional redesign under conditions of democratic suppression.
The Emergency context is essential. Political opposition was weakened. Civil liberties had been crushed. Press freedom was under attack. Detentions had become a tool of rule. In that atmosphere, Parliament used the amendment power to entrench the executive’s view of the Constitution.
The 42nd Amendment also directly confronted the Supreme Court’s great intervention in Kesavananda Bharati v State of Kerala, decided in 1973. In that case, the Court held that Parliament’s power to amend the Constitution was wide, but not unlimited. Parliament could not alter the Constitution’s Basic Structure.
The Basic Structure doctrine is sometimes criticised as judge-made and anti-majoritarian. Yet it emerged from a real constitutional danger: if the amendment power is unlimited, then a government with the required majority can legally destroy democracy while claiming to act under the Constitution.
Kesavananda said no. Some features are so central that even Parliament cannot abolish them. Judicial review, republican democracy, secularism, federalism, the rule of law, and the dignity of the individual cannot be treated as disposable.
The 42nd Amendment tried to dismantle that limit. It attempted to declare that constitutional amendments could not be questioned in any court. In plain terms, it sought to make Parliament the final judge of the limits of Parliament’s own power.
That is the oldest temptation in constitutional politics. Power wants to mark its own exam sheet.
The later 44th Amendment corrected some Emergency-era excesses. The Supreme Court also pushed back in cases such as Minerva Mills. But the episode remains a warning. India’s Constitution could be altered extensively, quickly, and during a period when normal democratic resistance was deeply compromised.
That should unsettle anyone who cares about the Constitution as a constraint on power.
Article 368 makes amendment difficult on paper, but politics often makes it easy
India’s Constitution does not allow amendment by a simple ordinary majority in most important cases. Article 368 usually requires a special majority in Parliament: a majority of the total membership of each House, and a two-thirds majority of members present and voting.
Some amendments also require ratification by at least half of the State legislatures. This applies when changes affect federal features such as the election of the President, the extent of executive power of the Union and States, the Supreme Court and High Courts, distribution of legislative powers, representation of States in Parliament, or Article 368 itself.
On paper, that is not casual.
So why does the Constitution still feel too easy to amend?
Because legal difficulty depends on political conditions. A dominant government with disciplined party control can convert a special majority into a procedural hurdle. If opposition parties are fragmented, if public debate is thin, if parliamentary committees are bypassed, and if party whips flatten dissent, even constitutional amendments can move with unnerving speed.
India’s anti-defection law deepens this problem. Legislators are often unable to vote against the party line without risking disqualification. That may promote government stability, but it also weakens individual legislative judgement. In constitutional matters, this is especially costly.
A constitutional amendment should not be treated like a budget vote or a routine bill. It should require more than numbers. It should require time, reason-giving, committee study, public explanation, and federal consultation when the change affects the structure of power.
India’s amendment process does not consistently demand those democratic habits.
This is why the 67th Amendment matters so much symbolically. It shows that the Constitution can be changed at a speed that leaves little room for genuine public awareness. Even if the facts of Punjab in 1990 were grave, the constitutional lesson is severe: the amendment process did not require delay, cooling-off, or broader deliberation.
Some democracies require referendums for major constitutional changes. Others require supermajorities across multiple legislative sessions. Some demand intervening elections before certain amendments can take effect. India does not generally require these safeguards.
That flexibility helped the early Republic pursue social reform. It also gave later governments a powerful tool.
The 106th Amendment proves even popular reform can carry political timing
The 106th Constitutional Amendment, passed in 2023, introduced one-third reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assemblies. It is widely celebrated, and for good reason. Women remain severely underrepresented in elected bodies. A constitutional guarantee of representation is a major democratic commitment.
This is the kind of amendment that reminds us why amendability matters. A rigid constitution can freeze injustice. A living constitution can correct exclusion.
But the 106th Amendment also reveals the politics of implementation.
The reservation will take effect only after delimitation is carried out following the relevant census. That means the measure, though passed with great ceremony, will not be operational before the next delimitation process. It is widely understood that implementation will not happen before 2029 at the earliest.
So the passage was immediate. The benefit was deferred.
That gap deserves scrutiny. Constitutional symbolism arrived at once. Constitutional redistribution of seats will come later, subject to timing, census operations, delimitation politics, and future political will.
This does not make the amendment bad. It makes it revealing.
A constitutional event can be both progressive and politically calculated. The 106th Amendment gave the government a powerful public message: women’s reservation had finally passed. Yet the actual reordering of electoral competition was postponed. Parties could celebrate the principle without immediately confronting the consequences of candidate selection, seat rotation, and local power shifts.
This is a familiar pattern in Indian constitutional politics. Amendments often do two things at once. They declare a moral position and manage a political timetable.
That is why constitutional analysis must look beyond text. It must ask:
Who benefits now?
Who waits?
Which institution gains power?
Which court ruling is being answered?
Which political conflict is being postponed?
What becomes harder to challenge after the amendment?
The 106th Amendment should be welcomed for its promise. It should also be studied for its design. Enthusiasm and scrutiny can coexist. In fact, constitutional democracy requires both.
The danger is not amendment, but amendment without constitutional culture
No serious constitutional scholar can argue that India’s Constitution should be nearly impossible to amend. That would betray the history of the Republic.
India needed land reform. It needed affirmative action. It needed Panchayati Raj and urban local bodies. It needed institutional adjustment for new States, linguistic realities, representation, cooperative federalism, taxation, education, and social justice. Many amendments have strengthened democracy rather than weakened it.
The Constitution’s framers did not want a frozen document. B.R. Ambedkar famously defended a Constitution that was both flexible and strong enough to hold the Union together. The founding generation understood that a new democracy would need room to grow.
The real danger lies elsewhere. India has often relied on courts to supply constitutional restraint after politics has failed to do so.
The Basic Structure doctrine is the best example. It is a judicially created brake on the amendment power. Many celebrate it, and rightly so. Without it, the 42nd Amendment’s logic could have carried India towards parliamentary absolutism.
But a democracy should not depend only on judges to rescue the Constitution from elected power. Courts matter, but constitutional culture must also live in Parliament, parties, media, universities, civil society, and public movements.
A healthier amendment culture would include several habits.
Longer deliberation for major amendments
A constitutional amendment should rarely move in haste. There should be time for MPs, State governments, scholars, affected communities, and the public to study the text.
Routine committee scrutiny
Major amendments should ordinarily go to a parliamentary committee. If the government refuses, it should explain why.
Clear statements of constitutional purpose
Governments should state the problem an amendment solves, the institutions it affects, and the rights or federal principles it touches.
Federal consultation when power shifts
Even where State ratification is not formally required, changes with practical federal consequences should involve serious consultation.
A presumption against court-proofing
Parliament should not use constitutional amendment to place ordinary legislation beyond meaningful review. Judicial review is not an inconvenience. It is part of the constitutional bargain.
Implementation timelines that respect citizens
When an amendment promises representation or rights, the timeline should be clear. Deferred justice should not be hidden behind celebratory language.
These are not radical demands. They are basic democratic manners.
A constitution should slow power down
The story of India’s amendments is the story of Indian politics itself. It contains social revolution, judicial confrontation, centralising ambition, emergency abuse, federal negotiation, symbolic reform, and democratic repair.
That complexity matters. The amendment power has done good. It has also done harm.
The First Amendment created a model for shielding laws from courts. The Ninth Schedule grew from 13 laws to 284. The 42nd Amendment showed how a government could use constitutional change to protect concentrated power during the Emergency. The 67th Amendment showed that even grave constitutional action could move from introduction to assent in a single day. The 106th Amendment showed that even welcome reform can be structured so that political credit arrives before practical implementation.
The answer is not to make India’s Constitution immovable. That would be both unrealistic and undesirable. India is too unequal, too diverse, and too unfinished for constitutional rigidity to become a virtue.
But the Constitution must be harder to bend for short-term power.
Amendment should feel exceptional. It should trigger public attention. It should invite argument. It should produce reasons that can be tested, not just numbers that can be counted.
A constitution is not only a legal document. It is a promise that the people will not be ruled by the mood of the moment. It tells governments that a majority is powerful, but not limitless.
India’s Constitution has endured because citizens, courts, movements, and institutions have repeatedly fought to keep it alive. That endurance is impressive. It is also not guaranteed.
A document that can be amended in a day, packed with laws shielded from scrutiny, or redesigned to answer inconvenient Supreme Court rulings risks becoming too supple for its own purpose. It may still be called a constitution. It may still carry the moral weight of the founding moment.
But a real constitution must do more than enable power. It must resist power when resistance matters most.
