Vice President Dhankhar claims the Constitution’s Preamble is unchangeable, like parenthood, but legal history and global examples suggest otherwise. Is the Preamble truly beyond amendment?
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KOCHI: On July 7, 2025, Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar made a striking statement during his interaction with students and faculty at the National University of Advanced Legal Studies (NUALS), Kochi.
Reiterating a position he has expressed before, Dhankhar claimed that the Preamble of the Indian Constitution is unchangeable, likening it to the immutable relationship of parenthood.
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“Howsoever you may try, you can’t change your parenthood. That is not possible,”
Dhankhar said, asserting that the Preamble cannot be amended, no matter how hard one may try.
Dhankhar, lamenting the inclusion of the words ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’ during the Emergency through the 42nd Constitutional Amendment, calling that time the “darkest period of our democracy.”
According to him, no country in history has ever altered its constitutional preamble, an assertion meant to imply that India’s modification was both extraordinary and improper.
This statement comes in the context of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) calling for a review of those very additions. At a recent event marking 50 years since the Emergency, RSS general secretary Dattatreya Hosabole contended that Dr. B.R. Ambedkar never intended for the words ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’ to appear in the Preamble, arguing their inclusion was illegitimate, as it happened when Parliament was not functioning and fundamental rights were suspended.
But what do the legal facts say?
Can the Preamble be amended? – Yes
The Supreme Court of India, in November 2024, reiterated that Parliament does indeed have the power to amend the Constitution, including the Preamble, provided the procedure laid down in Article 368 is followed. This was the very route through which the 42nd Amendment Act, 1976 inserted the words ‘socialist’, ‘secular’, and ‘integrity’ into the Preamble.
Legally speaking, even the concept of parenthood is not immutable, it can change through processes like adoption. In that sense, parenthood, much like the Constitution of India, is not merely a matter of biology or historical origin.
It’s equally curious that the Vice President claims no country has ever amended its preamble, especially considering that many nations don’t even have a written constitution, let alone a preamble. The United States was among the first to include a preamble, largely for historical framing.
Moreover, unlike, for example, John Locke’s Constitution of the State of Carolina in colonial America, the Indian Preamble does not proclaim itself to be “sacred,” “unalterable,” or “perpetually established.”
Interestingly, several countries explicitly outline the process for amending the preamble to their constitutions.
Take Serbia, for example, its constitution mandates that any amendment affecting the preamble, constitutional principles, human and minority rights, the system of governance, declarations of war or emergency, or the procedures for constitutional amendments, must be presented to a republic-wide referendum for approval.
Similarly, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia had a provision requiring that any amendment to the Preamble—or to provisions related to local self-government and community rights—must be passed by a two-thirds majority in the legislature, including a majority from representatives of minority communities.
These provisions were notably examined by the Venice Commission in 2008, during its assessment of constitutional amendment frameworks within the European Union.
More importantly, however, the Vice President seems to have overlooked well-documented cases of actual preamble amendments in other countries.
For instance, Turkey revised its constitutional preamble twice, first in 1982, as noted by the UNHCR, and again in 1995, as recorded by the ILO. North Korea, too, amended its preamble in 2012 to glorify its founding leaders, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, and to proclaim itself an “invincible state of political ideology, a nuclear-armed state, and an indomitable military power.” Zambia, on the other hand, undertook a complete replacement of its preamble in 2016.
These examples make it clear that Vice President Dhankhar may have been misadvised on the constitutional histories of other nations — several of which have indeed altered their preambles through defined legal processes.
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