Should ‘Constitutional Morality’ be discarded? | Criticisms and a Response

ON APRIL 8, 2026, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Union government in the Sabrimala Review proceedings, argued against the widening of judicial review through the concept of ‘constitutional morality’. He criticised the Supreme Court’s reliance on the concept to nullify legislative and executive actions when no other constitutional ground could be found for the same. Denouncing it as a “vague and subjective” notion, he contended that it is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution and has evolved through judgments such as Joseph Shine v. Union of India (2018) and Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India (2018). The Solicitor General insisted that when the framers of the Constitution had referred to the term ‘morality’ in Article 25 of the Constitution, they had meant public morality, and not some abstract notion of constitutional morality.  

Such allegations warrant discussion over what constitutional morality truly entails. While cynics have portrayed the concept as a vague and subjective catchphrase used to impose the moral values of the adjudicating judge over the public, supporters contend that the concept is neither a novel invention of judicial guile nor is it a “vague and subjective” concept that can be moulded according to the caprice of the person applying it. For the latter, it is a notion that embeds the Indian constitutional discourse; as the late M.P. Singh argues, it is “the guiding spirit to achieve the transformation, which, above all, the Constitution seeks to achieve.” 

A closer look reveals that the meaning of constitutional morality has not been static. It has evolved considerably from its original meaning in the Indian constitutional discourse. Nevertheless, one may still find certain common motifs anchoring the concept.  

Constitutional Morality under the Indian Constitution

Origins

In the Indian context, constitutional morality was, for the first time, mentioned by Dr B.R. Ambedkar on the floor of the Constituent Assembly. He had employed the concept while justifying the incorporation of administrative details in the Indian Constitution. Quoting British historian George Grote, Ambedkar defined constitutional morality as reverence for the ‘forms of the constitution’, obedience to authority and the constitutional forms. But this was not to mean blind worship of the constitutional authorities. 

Ambedkar emphasised that constitutional morality also incorporated “the habit of open speech, of action subject only to definite legal control, and unrestrained censure of those very authorities as to all their public acts – combined, too, with a perfect confidence in the bosom of every citizen, amidst the bitterness of party contest, that the forms of the constitution will not be less sacred in the eyes of his opponents than in his own.” 

Ambedkar wished for a constitutional set-up where debates, disagreements, and conflicts of interest were settled through collective discourse within the designated forums established by the Constitution. It was for this reason that he was unwilling to formulate a ‘socialist’ constitution or make distributive justice the foundational aim of the Constitution, despite his unfiltered determination to uplift the oppressed sections of society, particularly Dalits, accepting upliftment through a deliberative process prominently in the legislature.  

Constitutional morality, thus, for Ambedkar, was concerned not with substantive ideals but with adherence to the constitutional processes. The Constitutional revolution, for Ambedkar, was about the consensus not over substantive objectives but rather, a form of political organisation sustained by common ways of doing things – that is, under the restrictive structure of the constitution. This organisation was the core of constitutional morality.