India's 85-Word Preamble Was Amended Once, in 1976, to Add 'Socialist', 'Secular' and 'Integrity', and the Supreme Court Declined to Remove Them on 25 November 2024

India’s Preamble has 85 words, and the Constitution’s own footnotes record exactly one change to it. The Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976 replaced “Sovereign Democratic Republic” with “Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic” and “unity of the Nation” with “unity and integrity of the Nation”, from 3 January 1977.

The Supreme Court has given two answers on whether the Preamble is part of the Constitution at all. In 1960 it said no. In 1973, in Kesavananda Bharati v State of Kerala, judges who split over how far Parliament may amend the Constitution agreed that it is. On 25 November 2024 the Court dismissed petitions asking it to take the 1976 words out. This article goes through the Preamble in the order it is written.

Where the words came from

The ideas were fixed before the draft. On 13 December 1946 Jawaharlal Nehru moved the Objectives Resolution in the Constituent Assembly, and the Assembly adopted it on 22 January 1947. Its first clause declared the Assembly’s “firm and solemn resolve to proclaim India as an Independent Sovereign Republic”, and its fifth promised “justice, social, economic and political; equality of status, of opportunity, and before the law”. How that Assembly was chosen and how it worked is in our account of the Constituent Assembly.

Drafting the Preamble itself was left for last. B. Shiva Rao’s history, as the Supreme Court quotes it in 1973, gives the earliest draft as a formal sentence that began “We, the people of India, seeking to promote the common good”. In July 1947 the Union Constitution Committee provisionally accepted a Preamble drafted by B. N. Rau in July 1947 on the understanding that the final text would rest on the Objectives Resolution, and the Assembly held the question over.

On 17 October 1949 the Assembly took it up, after every other part of the Constitution, so that it would match the finished text. Shiva Rao records Rajendra Prasad, the Assembly’s president, giving that reason. Hasrat Mohani moved to rename the country the “Union of Indian Socialistic Republics”, and the motion was negatived. H. V. Kamath moved to open with “In the name of God”. A show of hands followed, and the record reads “Ayes: 41 Noes: 68”.

Passed without alteration, the Preamble gained its date line afterwards: Shiva Rao writes that “this twenty-sixth day of November 1949” went into the last paragraph to mark the day the Constitution was finally adopted.

Sovereign, democratic and republic

Sovereign means India answers to no outside authority. Vallabhbhai Patel told the Assembly on 12 October 1949 that the new Constitution was “a real union of the Indian people”, in the words the Supreme Court quotes from Shiva Rao. Shiva Rao also writes that once power had been transferred, the question of any later British approval could no longer arise, which made the phrase “give to ourselves this Constitution” appropriate.

Democratic is the word that can be counted. Article 326 entitles every citizen aged 18 or more to be registered as a voter, unless disqualified on grounds such as unsoundness of mind, crime or corrupt practice. Until the Sixty-first Amendment, in force from 28 March 1989, the age was 21. India’s first general election, in 1951 to 1952, had an electorate of 173,212,343 (17.3 crore) and 489 Lok Sabha seats, in the Press Information Bureau’s figures. How voters are identified today is in our explainer on India’s voter ID system.

B. R. Ambedkar told the Assembly on 25 November 1949: “In politics we will be recognizing the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value.” Social and economic life, he added, would “continue to deny the principle of one man one value”. His closing speech is placed in its setting in our piece on Ambedkar and the writing of the Constitution.

Republic means the head of state is not a hereditary ruler. Article 52 says “There shall be a President of India”, and Article 54 has the President elected by the elected members of both Houses of Parliament and of the state legislative assemblies. Article 18(1) adds that “No title, not being a military or academic distinction, shall be conferred by the State.” Article 394 brought most of the Constitution into force on 26 January 1950.

Socialist and secular, the words added in 1976

Section 2 of the 1976 Act made both changes, and the Constitution’s footnotes date them to 3 January 1977. In the 2022 pocket edition of the Constitution, “socialist” appears nowhere outside the Preamble. “Secular” appears once in the body, in Article 25(2)(a), in the phrase “other secular activity” associated with religious practice.

Both words had come before the Assembly and been left out. On 15 November 1948 Professor K. T. Shah moved to describe India in Article 1 as a Secular, Federal, Socialist Union of States, and the motion was negatived. Ambedkar replied that the Constitution was “merely a mechanism for the purpose of regulating the work of the various organs of the State” and that the people should decide the shape of society for themselves as time and circumstances required. Ambedkar called the amendment “purely superfluous”, because the Directive Principles (the Constitution’s guidance to governments, which courts do not enforce) already pointed the State that way, and said “I fail to understand what more socialism can be.” Kamath said the two words belonged, if anywhere, in the Preamble.

The idea of a secular Constitution was in judicial use before the word was. In 1973 Chief Justice Sikri listed the “Secular character of the Constitution” among its basic features, and Justices Shelat and Grover listed the “Secular and federal character of the Constitution”.

For “socialist”, the economic content sits in Articles 38 and 39. Article 38 directs the State to secure an order in which “justice, social, economic and political, shall inform all the institutions of the national life”. Article 39(c) says the economic system should not result in “the concentration of wealth and means of production to the common detriment”. The Supreme Court’s 2024 order reads the word as a commitment to a welfare State and to equality of opportunity. The order continues: “Neither the Constitution nor the Preamble mandates a specific economic policy or structure, whether left or right.” The Court calls India’s model a mixed economy in which private enterprise is protected by Article 19(1)(g), and one change inside that model is covered in our account of the 1991 reforms.

For “secular”, the order says India developed its own meaning, under which “the State neither supports any religion nor penalizes the profession and practice of any faith”. The Court roots that in Articles 14, 15 and 16, which bar discrimination, and in Articles 25 to 30 on religious freedom and minority institutions. Article 44, the order notes, permits the State to strive for a uniform civil code, and in 1949 some scholars read “secular” as opposed to religion, which made the term seem imprecise. Constitution Bench judgments in Kesavananda Bharati and S R Bommai (1994, nine judges), the order says, hold secularism to be a basic feature.

Justice, liberty, equality and fraternity

These four are the promises to citizens, and the first three have articles behind them. Justice “social, economic and political” returns in Article 38. Liberty of “thought, expression, belief, faith and worship” is carried by Article 19(1)(a), the freedom of speech and expression, and by Article 25(1), under which all persons are “equally entitled to freedom of conscience”. Equality of status is Article 14 on equality before the law and Article 15’s bar on discrimination on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth. Equality of opportunity is Article 16(1), for public employment. Article 17 abolishes untouchability.

In the 2022 pocket edition, “fraternity” appears only in the Preamble. Ambedkar defined it on 25 November 1949: “Fraternity means a sense of common brotherhood of all Indians.” Then came the line: “Without fraternity equality and liberty will be no deeper than coats of paint.”

The nearest operative text is Article 51A(e), which makes it a citizen’s duty to promote “harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood” among all the people of India. Part IVA, which holds the Fundamental Duties, was inserted by the same 1976 Act. The 2024 order reads equality of status and opportunity, fraternity, dignity and liberty of belief together as reflecting a secular ethos.

Is the Preamble part of the Constitution?

In 1960 the President asked the Supreme Court, under Article 143(1), whether giving effect to the Indo-Pakistan agreement of 10 September 1958 to divide Berubari Union half and half needed a constitutional amendment. One argument before the Court was that the Preamble’s words “sovereign democratic Republic” put India’s territory beyond Parliament’s reach. In an opinion delivered on 14 March 1960 by Justice Gajendragadkar, the Court rejected that.

The Court called the Preamble, in the words of the jurist Joseph Story, “a key to open the mind of the makers”. Then it said “the preamble is not a part of the Constitution” and is no source of substantive power. One opening remained: if an article’s terms are ambiguous, “some assistance may be sought in the objectives enshrined in the preamble”.

Thirteen years later, in Kesavananda Bharati v State of Kerala, decided on 24 April 1973, a 13-judge bench went back over that line. Chief Justice S. M. Sikri wrote that the Berubari Court “was wrong in holding” the Preamble to be outside the Constitution, because “It was expressly voted to be a part of the Constitution.” Justices Hegde and Mukherjea noted that the motion “The Preamble stand part of the Constitution” had been adopted. Justice Khanna wrote that the Assembly’s record is “positive evidence to establish that the Preamble is a part of the Indian Constitution”.

The judges disagreed sharply on how far Parliament may amend the Constitution, and they still agreed on this point. Justice Dwivedi, who would have given Parliament wider power, read Berubari as saying only that the Preamble is not an enacting part. Justice Khanna reasoned that, as part of the Constitution, the Preamble’s provisions other than those relating to the basic structure are open to amendment under Article 368.

What the Supreme Court decided on 25 November 2024

Dr Balram Singh and other petitioners asked the Court to strike “socialist” and “secular” out of the Preamble. The order, by Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar, records their grounds. The insertion in 1976 was retrospective, they said, and made the Preamble untrue, since the Constitution was adopted on 26 November 1949. The Assembly had deliberately kept “secular” out, and “socialist” restricts the economic choices of elected governments. The amendment was also passed during the Emergency, they argued, after the Lok Sabha’s normal term had ended on 18 March 1976.

The Court answered in a seven-page order and dismissed the petitions without issuing notice. Article 368’s amending power, it held, “extends to the Preamble”, and the 1949 adoption date “will not curtail or restrict the power under Article 368”. The Court accepted that the Assembly had not agreed to include the two words, and wrote that the Constitution is a living document. On the Emergency, it noted that the 1976 insertions were scrutinised again in 1978, when Parliament took up the Constitution Forty-fifth Amendment Bill, renumbered the Forty-fourth Amendment Act, and that a proposed definition of the two words in Article 366 was not accepted by the Council of States. The order also repeats that amendments can be challenged for violating the basic structure.

The petitions were filed in 2020, forty-four years after the words entered the Preamble. The Court said it found “no legitimate cause or justification for challenging this constitutional amendment after nearly 44 years”, and that the additions had not restricted policies of elected governments that respected fundamental rights and the basic structure.

The Preamble today still ends with “this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949”. According to the Constitution’s footnotes, the 1976 Act changed two phrases and left that line alone.