April 24, 1973 was a historic day in the history of the Constitution of India.  It was on this day that the Supreme Court of India, through its path-breaking judgment in the Kesavananda Bharati case, established that Parliament does not have unfettered power to amend the Constitution. Known as the ‘basic structure’ doctrine, the verdict stated that there are certain fundamental features -- democracy, secularism, federalism, sovereignty of the nation, the rule of law, securing individual freedom, etc. -- that are beyond the scope of alteration by the supreme law-making body, the Parliament. 

The RSS and other Sangh Parivar offshoots couldn’t digest and accept the Constitution as adopted by the Constituent Assembly. They considered it as nothing but a ‘copy and paste’ work, to use a modern terminology, from constitutions of different western countries. They found it lacking as it had not followed Manusmriti or similar texts of ancient India. Their objection to the Constitution had found its expression in an editorial in Organizer, the RSS mouth piece: “In our Constitution, there is no mention of the unique constitutional development in ancient Bharat. Manu’s Laws were written long before Lycurgus of Sparta or Solon of Persia. To this day, his laws, as enunciated in Manusmriti, excite the admiration of the world and elicit spontaneous obedience and conformity. But to our constitutional pundits that means nothing.” The Sangh Parivar’s dislike for the Constitution continues till this day and it finds expression, off and on, through some of their motormouth leaders. They clamour for rewriting the Constitution to bring it in tune with Hindutva ideology, traditions, culture, ideas and aspirations. 

However, it is the ‘unadulterated stand of the Supreme Court’, which finds its unambiguous expression in the Kesavananda Bharati judgement, that keeps the Constitution in tact. It goes to the credit of the apex court that it has not allowed the statute to be watered down. There is no Constitution in the world which has not undergone  amendments and the same is true with the Constitution of India. But what the Supreme Court stated is that its foundational principles can neither be changed nor tweaked by any law-making body. The Constitution Bench of 13 judges, in its 7-6 decision, had asserted its right to strike down amendments that were in violation of the fundamental and basic principles of the Constitution. While the Parliament has wide powers, it does not have the power to destroy the basic elements of the Constitution. 

The apex court, it seems, had realised the danger of a government with brute majority amending the Constitution to the extend of jeopardizing its socialist, secular, democratic, federal principles that form its basic character. The Kesavananda Bharati judgement made it impossible for any government to bring in amendments that would alter the ‘basic structure.’ In the 50 years after the historic verdict, though judges of all hues have come and gone in the Supreme Court, the basic structure doctrine has survived. However, it is also true that the governments have brought in laws that pose challenge to some of the principles enunciated in the basic structure doctrine  as we have seen in the Citizenship Amendment Act or the abrogation of Article 370. These challenges are yet to undergo the ‘litmus test’ in the highest court of the land. The fact that the Supreme Court has created a dedicated web page on the verdict to mark the 50th anniversary of the landmark judgment shows its commitment to stick to it.