The author is Lead at Charkha, the Constitutional Law Centre, at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. Views are personal.
When Professor Tom Ginsburg and his colleagues published their landmark comparative study, The Endurance of National Constitutions (Cambridge University Press: 2012), a key finding was that the average national constitution lasts nineteen years and most constitutions die young — undone by political rupture, social transformation, or institutional decay. As the authors memorably note, an old joke captures this fragility: a man enters a library and asks for a copy of the French Constitution, only to be told that the library does not stock periodicals.
Against this global record of constitutional impermanence, the Indian Constitution appears almost anomalous. At seventy-five years, it remains vibrant — amended more than a hundred times yet retaining its fundamental architecture; scrutinised before courts and criticised in public life, yet widely accepted as the basic framework of governance. Its longevity is not merely an institutional achievement but a comparative rarity.
Ginsburg’s framework provides a useful lens to understand this unusual endurance. He identifies three structural anchors that support constitutional survival:
1. Flexibility—the capacity to adapt through amendment or interpretation.
2. Inclusion—the willingness of major political actors to accept the constitutional settlement; and
3. Specificity—a design detailed enough to structure political conflict.
These factors together create what David Easton called “diffuse support” — a deep reservoir of loyalty to the constitutional order that persists even when particular decisions are unpopular. India’s constitutional experience exemplifies precisely this equilibrium.
1. An inclusive constitution both in text and process
The Indian Constitution was drafted through a process that was remarkably representative for its time. Despite sharp ideological differences, political actors across the spectrum contributed to the document’s creation. The Assembly’s composition included members from all major religious and minority groups as well as political formations that disagreed with the Indian National Congress, giving rise to a document shaped through deep deliberation, disagreement, and compromise. Dr B.R. Ambedkar—who openly disagreed with Mahatma Gandhi and once termed the need for a Constituent Assembly superfluous — was chosen to chair the Drafting Committee not because he shared the ruling party’s politics, but because of his legal expertise. The Assembly debates are replete with interventions from members who criticised provisions in the draft Constitution, expressed dissatisfaction, and yet remained fully engaged in the deliberative process. One cannot forget the famous speech of K. Hanumanthaiya, who stood in the Assembly and lamented that “we wanted the music of the Veena or Sitar, but here we have the music of an English band.”
On sensitive issues such as the Uniform Civil Code, cow protection, and social welfare, the framers adopted compromise formulas—often situating contested aspirations within the Directive Principles of the State Policy. The result was a Constitution with something for everyone.
The process was not confined to the elite. Consultations were held across the country; public opinion was invited; provincial assemblies debated provisions; and the draft was circulated widely. Ginsburg and his co-authors argue that publicly formulated and debated constitutions create the “common knowledge and attachment essential for self-enforcement.” The process of constitution making in India was reflective of this insight. Importantly, this broad-based acceptance did not vanish after 1950. The Constitution has been contested, interpreted, and amended, but rarely rejected. Even recent electoral campaigns—across parties—have invoked the Constitution’s moral authority, demonstrating that the attachment forged during its drafting continues to hold.
2. Flexibility Without Fragility
Pandit Nehru warned the Constituent Assembly that “there should be a certain flexibility. If you make anything rigid and permanent, you stop a nation’s growth.” A constitution, he insisted, “must be flexible enough to adjust itself to changing conditions.” This founding philosophy was embedded in the flexible amending procedure in our Constitution. Article 368 enables Parliament to amend extensive portions of the Constitution with relative ease—subject to ratification by the State governments where appropriate. This flexibility has allowed India to navigate sweeping transitions: land reform, the abolition of privy purses, strengthening reservations, anti-defection laws, fiscal federalism through the GST, the 73rd and 74th Amendments, and the modernisation of the administrative state.
The importance of this flexibility is evident when juxtaposed with other nations with a rigid constitution. For instance, the United States has amended its Constitution only twenty-seven times in 235 years. Its rigidity has frozen polarising issues from constitutional change—the Second Amendment being the most cited example. Gun regulation, a policy question in most democracies, has become a constitutional impasse in America. This rigidity risks making constitutions obsolete or forcing courts into disproportionate roles, the latter particularly evident in America,
India avoided this fate as flexible amendability prevented ossification. However, it should be noted that where amendments became contentious, the Supreme Court developed the basic structure doctrine, ensuring that change could be substantial but never destructive.
3. Specificity: A Constitution Designed to Structure Conflict
India’s Constitution is unusually specific—longer than most, detailed in its allocations of power, and explicit on procedure. What some critics dismissed as excessive detail has, in fact, been a stabilising feature, added to account for historical anxieties, political fragmentation, and tread a path of detailed framework as against discretion which could be misused. As Dr. Arghya Sengupta notes in his latest book, that the framers were of the view that Indians had not experienced modern democracy before and hence, had to be led gently with detailed provisions on every aspect, no matter how banal.
Ginsburg notes that specificity reduces ambiguity, lowers compliance costs, and prevents constitutional conflict from escalating into political crisis. In India, this specificity has provided clarity to institutions on their role and also allowed them to channel disagreement through structured mechanisms, rather than through extra-constitutional improvisations.
4. A Democratic Constitutional Culture: Respecting Process, Even in Crisis
Durability ultimately depends not on text, but on habits of constitutional behaviour. India’s most striking strength has been its democratic temperament: the instinct to resolve disputes through law, not force.
The infamous national emergency of 1975-1977 is the clearest example. Though rights were suspended and dissent suppressed, the regime operated within constitutional forms—invoking Articles 352, 358, and 359, enacting amendments, and seeking legal validation. And critically, elections were held and the government that proclaimed the Emergency was removed through the very Constitution it had tested.
The aftermath is equally instructive. Judges who lent implicit support to the Executive through their judgements, namely ADM Jabalpur v. Shiv Kant Shukla, were not removed, superseded, or hounded. In fact, there was public pressure on the new government to appoint Justice H.R. Khanna as the Chief Justice of India in place of Justice Beg (who had superseded him in breach of the seniority convention), however, the government did not choose retaliation. On the contrary, amongst our neighbours Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, constitutional crises have often led to judicial purges. India instead chose institutional recovery through jurisprudence, not retribution. Even controversial amendments—like portions of the 42nd Amendment—were corrected through the constitutional framework of amendments, not outside it.
This democratic culture is also supplemented by the temperament of political actors across eras, who have continued to engage with the Constitution as the primary arena of contestation. Despite sporadic rhetoric, no government has seriously attempted a wholesale replacement of the Constitution and has instead acted under the Constitution. That instinct to act through law, however contested the outcome, stabilises the system. As Ginsburg notes, constitutions survive when political elites find it safer to operate within the constitutional bargain than to abandon it.
Concluding remarks:
India’s Constitution has endured not because it is flawless, but because it has combined inclusion, flexibility, specificity, and a democratic culture of constitutional behavior. It has absorbed crises, corrected excesses, and sustained legitimacy across generations. Yet endurance must not become complacency. The Constitution today faces three major structural challenges.
First, we are witnessing a wave of centralisation where an already quasi-federal structure is being strained. Recent examples include actions of the Governors to stall democratic decisions taken by state governments, enactment of legislation that curb the autonomy of state governments, and use of the Constitution’s strong unitary provisions to urge the state governments to comply with the Union’s policies, despite their having discretion to not do so. Second, a fall in democratic deliberation where major laws are enacted without meaningful debate, minimal committee scrutiny, and public consultation. The result is the enactment of laws that face concerns of implementation on account of not being reflective of ground realities or fully anticipating public concerns. Third, the lack of effective and speedy justice mainly on account of the perennial pendency before the Courts, which risks hollowing the promise of Article 32 and 226.
These concerns do not diminish the achievements of the past seventy-five years; they sharpen the Constitution’s ongoing project. The next quarter-century will require renewing constitutional culture, strengthening institutions, and restoring deliberative practice.
[1] The author is Lead at Charkha, the Constitutional Law Centre, at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. Views are personal.