KSLU Corner™ New AIBE previous QP

The Constitution as an instrument of social transformation

Law and Social Transformation in India · Unit I · Topic 2 of 13 · 6 min read

How the text, the directive principles and the Supreme Court have used the Constitution to reorder Indian society, and the idea of transformative constitutionalism.

← All Law and Social Transformation in India topics Past papers
On this page
  1. 1. A constitution designed to change society
  2. 2. The textual instruments
  3. 3. Phase one: Parliament as the engine (1950 1975)
  4. 4. Phase two: the Court as the engine (after 1978)
  5. 5. Phase three: transformative constitutionalism
  6. 6. Economic development as a factor
  7. 7. Fundamental duties and the role of citizens
  8. How this is examined
Cases checked to exist. Read the judgment before quoting a holding.

Every case cited here has been checked to exist — the citation resolves and names the right parties. The propositions attributed to each case have not been verified line by line against the judgment. Case names link through to the full judgment: read it before quoting a holding in an examination answer, and never carry a proposition from notes into court on trust.

The examinable core. “Constitution is a major instrument of social transformation — elucidate” (April 2023) and “How does the Indian Constitution act as a tool for social transformation?” (January 2024). A good answer has three layers: what the text was designed to change, how Parliament and the courts used it, and the recent idea of transformative constitutionalism, with its critics.

1. A constitution designed to change society

Most liberal constitutions limit power. India's also directs power towards ends. The Constituent Assembly inherited a society organised by caste, by landlordism and by patriarchal personal law, and wrote a text meant to dismantle those arrangements. Dr. Ambedkar's closing speech of 25 November 1949 put the problem plainly: India was entering a life of contradictions, with equality in politics (one person, one vote, one value) and inequality in social and economic life, and the contradiction had to be removed or those who suffered from it would blow up the structure of political democracy.

Granville Austin called the Constitution first and foremost a social document, and identified the social revolution as one of its three strands alongside national unity and democracy.

2. The textual instruments

TargetProvisions
CasteArts 15(2), 15(4), 16(4), 17, 46, 330, 332, 335, 338, 338A
GenderArts 14, 15(3), 39(a), (d), (e), 42, 51A(e), 243D, 243T, 330A, 332A
ExploitationArts 23, 24, 39(e), (f), 43
Property and landArts 31A, 31B, 31C, Ninth Schedule, 39(b), (c), 300A
Religion and reformArt 25(2)(a), (b), Art 44
EducationArts 21A, 45, 46, 350A
Democracy at the baseArt 40, Parts IX and IXA
Tribal regionsFifth and Sixth Schedules, Art 244

Three design choices deserve emphasis. First, Article 17 abolishes untouchability and Articles 15(2) and 23 bind private persons, not only the State, which was unusual in 1950. Second, Article 25(2)(b) lets the State legislate for social welfare and reform and throw open Hindu religious institutions of a public character to all classes and sections of Hindus, so freedom of religion cannot be used to protect caste exclusion. Third, Part IV is non-justiciable but declared fundamental in the governance of the country (Article 37), which gave Parliament a constitutional mandate for land reform and welfare legislation.

3. Phase one: Parliament as the engine (1950–1975)

The early conflict was between the courts' protection of property and Parliament's land reform programme. When State of Madras v. Champakam Dorairajan, 1951 INSC 26, struck down communal reservation in college admissions, Parliament inserted Article 15(4) by the First Amendment, 1951, which also added Articles 31A and 31B and the Ninth Schedule. Sankari Prasad Singh Deo v. Union of India, 1951 INSC 47, upheld that amendment. The tussle ran through Golaknath (1967) to Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala, 1973 INSC 91, which allowed Parliament to amend any part of the Constitution, including fundamental rights, but not its basic structure. That settlement let social legislation proceed while protecting the core of the rights chapter.

4. Phase two: the Court as the engine (after 1978)

After the Emergency the Supreme Court reinvented itself. The new reading of Article 21 in Maneka Gandhi (1978) and the relaxation of standing in S.P. Gupta v. Union of India, 1981 INSC 209, opened the door to public interest litigation, which Upendra Baxi preferred to call social action litigation. Through it, directive principles were read into Article 21: livelihood, shelter, health, education (Unni Krishnan v. State of Andhra Pradesh, 1993 INSC 40), a clean environment, and protection from bonded and child labour. The Court also filled legislative gaps directly, most famously with the sexual harassment guidelines in Vishaka v. State of Rajasthan, 1997 INSC 604, using CEDAW.

5. Phase three: transformative constitutionalism

The phrase, borrowed from Karl Klare's 1998 article on the South African Constitution, entered Indian judgments in the 2017–2018 run of cases. The idea: the Constitution is a charter for changing society, so its rights must be read to dismantle inherited hierarchies, and constitutional morality (Ambedkar's term, from his speech of 4 November 1948) prevails over popular or majoritarian morality.

The debate to put in a 16-mark answer. Supporters (drawing on Klare and on Gautam Bhatia's The Transformative Constitution, 2019) say the text itself demands this reading. Critics make three points: unelected judges are choosing between moral visions that belong to the legislature; constitutional morality is undefined and can be used selectively; and judgments without social mobilisation change little on the ground (Baxi's and Galanter's scepticism about the reach of law). A balanced answer accepts the method but insists on restraint where religious communities are internally divided, which is why the Sabarimala review reference matters. Compare the US, where Brown v. Board of Education (1954) needed decades of enforcement, and South Africa, where the Constitutional Court in Minister of Health v. Treatment Action Campaign (2002) enforced a socio-economic right through a structured order.

6. Economic development as a factor

“Economic development is a key factor for heralding social transformation” (April 2023). The Constitution's economic chapter is in Articles 38, 39(b) and (c), 41 to 43 and 47. The first decades relied on planning (the Planning Commission, 1950, replaced by NITI Aayog in 2015) and on State ownership of the “commanding heights”. The 1991 reforms moved towards markets, and the Court treated that as policy outside judicial review in BALCO Employees' Union v. Union of India, 2001 INSC 601. The Nine-Judge Bench in Property Owners Association v. State of Maharashtra, 2024 INSC 835, held that not every privately owned resource is a “material resource of the community” under Article 39(b), rejecting the earlier broad reading and noting the shift in economic policy. Development drives social change (urbanisation weakens caste occupations; women's employment changes the family), but development without distribution reproduces inequality, which is the reason the Constitution pairs growth with Articles 38(2) and 39(c).

7. Fundamental duties and the role of citizens

Article 51A (inserted in 1976 on the Swaran Singh Committee's recommendation; clause (k) added in 2002) asks citizens to promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood transcending religious, linguistic and regional diversities, to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women, to develop the scientific temper and to protect the environment. They are not enforceable directly but are used to interpret statutes and to sustain reasonable restrictions.

How this is examined

As an essay on the Constitution as an instrument (or tool) of social transformation. Build it in the three phases above, end with the debate box. The same material answers “role of the judiciary in social change” (June 2010) and “economic development as a key factor”. Short notes: transformative constitutionalism, constitutional morality, fundamental duties in the era of modernisation, social legislation.

Now try the real questions: Law and Social Transformation in India past question papers.