A recurring fear — and a recurring accusation — is that the Constitution is being quietly de-constitutionalised: amended, chipped, and reinterpreted until the thing that protects you is gone. It is worth knowing the exact answer to that fear, because it is more solid than either the alarmists or the triumphalists admit.
It was built to change
Start with the design. The Constitution is amendable on purpose — Article 368 lays out how, and it has been used more than a hundred times. This is a feature, not a wound: a document that could never change would have died in 1950. Lowering the voting age, guaranteeing education, giving villages self-government — all were amendments. So “they amended it” is not, by itself, an alarm.
The collision
But if Parliament can amend anything, can it amend away democracy itself? The question came to a head in the early 1970s. After the Court in Golak Nath (1967) suggested Fundamental Rights were beyond amendment, Parliament struck back with the 24th and 25th Amendments (1971), asserting the power to amend any part of the Constitution at all. Unlimited power to amend would mean the Constitution held itself only at Parliament’s pleasure.
Kesavananda Bharati (1973): the answer
[Documented] The largest bench in Indian history — thirteen judges — heard the case, and by the narrowest margin, 7 to 6, laid down the doctrine that has governed ever since: Parliament may amend any part of the Constitution, but it may not damage or destroy its “basic structure.”
The basic structure is not a closed list, but the Court has named parts of it: the supremacy of the Constitution, the rule of law, the separation of powers, judicial review, secularism, federalism, free and fair elections, and the dignity of the individual. These are the load-bearing walls. You may renovate the house; you may not knock them out.
Minerva Mills (1980): the doctrine bites
The doctrine proved it was real when it mattered. The 42nd Amendment (1976), passed during the Emergency, had tried to place amendments beyond the reach of any court and to subordinate Fundamental Rights to the Directive Principles. In Minerva Mills (1980) the Supreme Court struck those provisions down, in a line that is the whole point:
Parliament cannot, under Article 368, expand its amending power so as to acquire for itself the right to repeal or abrogate the Constitution or destroy its basic structure.
[Documented] A limited power cannot be used to grant itself unlimited power. That is the guardrail against de-constitutionalisation, and it has teeth.
The honest other side
It would be a poor essay that presented the basic-structure doctrine as beyond argument, because it is not — and the site’s rule is to say so.
[Debated] The doctrine is judge-made. Nowhere does the text say “basic structure”; the Court read it in. Critics across the political spectrum call this the counter-majoritarian problem: unelected judges giving themselves a veto over amendments passed by an elected Parliament. Its defenders answer that someone must guard the core, and a temporary majority is exactly what the core needs guarding from. Both have a point.
[Debated] And its contents are contested. Whether a particular feature — secularism, a specific reservation, the precise shape of federalism — is part of the untouchable “basic structure” is argued case by case. So “this amendment violates the basic structure” is a claim to be tested in court, not a settled fact.
What this means for the accusation
Here the site’s standing rule does real work. Keep two shelves apart. A lawful amendment under Article 368 — even a contested one, like the 103rd (EWS) — is the system working, not sabotage. Disinformation about the Constitution, or an attempt to hollow out its core, is the genuine danger. The basic-structure doctrine is the line between them: it lets the document change with the times while forbidding any majority, however large, from amending away democracy, equality, secularism or judicial review.
So the answer to “is the Constitution being de-constitutionalised?” is neither the alarmist’s yes nor the complacent’s no. It is: it can be amended, it cannot be abolished by amendment, and the moment a change threatens the core, the place to prove it is a court — where, since 1973, the core has held.