Q.After reading Are Constitutions Static, students made 4 confused statements about the Constitution being like any other law / needing periodic change / never changeable / sacred document — comment on each.

Each of the four confused statements gets something about the Constitution partly right but draws the wrong conclusion from it, once compared with how India's Constitution has actually worked for 69-plus years.

Statement 1 — "The Constitution is like any other law. It simply tells us the rules and regulations governing the government." This is only partly right: the Constitution does provide rules for government, but unlike an ordinary law, it has been deliberately placed above ordinary law — most of it cannot be changed by a simple parliamentary majority, and some of it cannot be changed even by Parliament alone without the States' consent. It is also the source from which the authority of all other laws and institutions flows, which no ordinary law is.

Statement 2 — "The Constitution is the expression of the will of the people, so there must be a provision to change it after every ten or fifteen years." The first half is broadly right — the Constitution does need to accept modification as society's needs change — but the second half does not follow: there is no requirement, and no need, for change on a fixed timetable. India's Constitution has been amended as and when genuinely required (106 times in 74 years, unevenly spread across decades), not on any set periodic schedule, and the same document has still served the country continuously for over 69 years.

Statement 3 — "The Constitution is a statement of the philosophy of the country. It can never be changed." It is true that the Constitution reflects the country's dreams, aspirations and philosophy of governance — but the makers of the Constitution explicitly built in Article 368 precisely because they recognised that future modifications would be needed. It is a document made by human beings, not a fixed and unalterable text.

Statement 4 — "The Constitution is a sacred document. Therefore any talk of changing it is against democracy." The Constitution-makers did treat it as something to be respected and not casually tampered with, by placing it above ordinary law — but they combined this with a real amendment procedure, precisely because being "sacred" and being open to principled change are not opposites. In fact, refusing to let the Constitution ever respond to society's evolving will could itself work against democracy, since democracy depends on the framework of government staying responsive to the people it governs.