Write approximately 150 words on Constitutional morality in the Indian Constitution. (2024, 10 Marks)
A constitution can prescribe institutions but not the disposition with which they are worked; constitutional morality names that disposition. The phrase came from George Grote‘s History of Greece into Indian vocabulary through B. R. Ambedkar, and after decades of dormancy the Supreme Court has made it a working, and contested, standard of interpretation.
Ambedkar’s meaning
- Introducing the Draft Constitution on 4 November 1948, Ambedkar quoted Grote: a paramount reverence for the forms of the Constitution, obedience to authority acting within them, combined with open speech and unrestrained censure of those very authorities.
- He added the warning most often forgotten: Constitutional morality is not a natural sentiment. It has to be cultivated, for democracy in India is only a top-dressing on an Indian soil, which is essentially undemocratic.
- Its elements are self-restraint by those in power, fidelity to constitutional process, pacific criticism, respect for plurality and rejection of hero-worship. On 25 November 1949 he urged Indians to hold fast to constitutional methods, abandoning civil disobedience and satyagraha once lawful redress existed.
- Pratap Bhanu Mehta reads it as an ethic of restraint and scepticism about any organ’s claim to embody the people.
The judicial revival
- Manoj Narula v. Union of India (2014) treated it as a moral precept guiding the Prime Minister’s choice of ministers.
- Government of NCT of Delhi v. Union of India (2018) used it to govern the Lieutenant Governor’s relations with an elected government; D. Y. Chandrachud J spoke of filling in constitutional silences.
- Navtej Singh Johar (2018) decriminalised consensual same-sex relations, holding that majoritarian social morality must yield to the Constitution’s own. Joseph Shine (2018) struck down adultery as a crime, and Indian Young Lawyers Association (2018, 4:1) opened Sabarimala to women of all ages.
- The shift matters: Ambedkar meant a discipline on political actors; the Court made it a source of substantive values enforced against majorities.
The critique
- It is vague and judge-centred, invoked more often than defined. Indu Malhotra J, dissenting in Sabarimala, warned against making equality the sole test of religious practice.
- Before the nine-judge Sabarimala reference in 2026, the Union argued it is a judge-made, indeterminate concept without textual footing; whether “morality” in Articles 25–26 includes constitutional morality is among the questions referred. Judgment was reserved on 14 May 2026.
Conclusion
Constitutional morality is indispensable as Ambedkar meant it — a restraint on power and a habit of democratic conduct. As a free-standing ground to invalidate law it needs principled limits. The reserved Sabarimala verdict will decide whether it remains an interpretive aid or becomes an independent test.