What do you understand by fundamental rights? How do they differ from other rights? Are they amendable? Refer to important Supreme Court decisions on the subject.

Meaning and Nature

A fundamental right, in the constitutional sense, is not merely a right conferred by an ordinary statute but one that finds its source directly in the Constitution itself, occupying a position higher than any law made by the legislature. Justice Bhagwati captured this idea memorably in Ajay Hasia v. Khalid Mujib when he observed that fundamental rights are constitutional guarantees given to the people of India and are not merely paper hopes or fleeting promises, and so long as they find a place in the Constitution they must not be allowed to be emasculated by a narrow and constricted judicial interpretation. What makes these rights truly fundamental is the mechanism of enforcement built into the Constitution itself — under Article 32, a person may approach the Supreme Court directly for the enforcement of these rights, and under Article 226, the High Courts exercise a similar jurisdiction. This constitutional remedy is itself treated as part of the basic structure, meaning even Parliament cannot take it away.

The definition of "state" against whom most of these rights operate is laid down expansively in Article 12, which includes the Union and State governments, the legislature, local authorities, and other authorities within or under the control of the Government of India. The judiciary has interpreted "other authorities" liberally over time — in cases such as Ajay Hasia v. Khalid Mujib and Som Prakash v. Union of India, the Supreme Court held that even government companies, statutory corporations, and registered societies fall within this net if they are financially, functionally, or administratively dominated by government control, so that the corporate veil cannot be used to escape constitutional discipline. Article 13 supplements this scheme by declaring that any law inconsistent with fundamental rights shall, to that extent, be void, thereby giving Part III a supra-legislative character that ordinary law simply does not possess.

How Fundamental Rights Differ from Ordinary Rights

The distinction between a fundamental right and an ordinary legal right lies in several dimensions, best appreciated through a comparative lens.

This table brings out why the framers thought it necessary to separate out fundamental rights from the general mass of legal entitlements — they wanted these liberties to be beyond the ordinary vicissitudes of legislative politics, subject only to the most rigorous and deliberate process of change.

Are Fundamental Rights Amendable?

This question troubled the Supreme Court through several decades and produced one of the richest chapters of constitutional jurisprudence in India. In the early case of Shankari Prasad v. Union of India, the Court held that the word "law" in Article 13(2) refers only to ordinary legislative law and does not include a constitutional amendment made under Article 368, so that fundamental rights could indeed be amended, including abridged or taken away, by Parliament exercising its constituent power. This was followed in Sajjan Singh v. State of Rajasthan, where the majority again upheld the amendability of Part III, though Justices Hidayatullah and Mudholkar expressed doubts about whether Parliament could really destroy the very fundamentals that the Constitution had guaranteed.

The pendulum swung decisively in I.C. Golak Nath v. State of Punjab, where an eleven-judge bench, by a narrow majority, reversed course and held that Parliament had no power whatsoever to amend fundamental rights, since Article 368 merely laid down the amending procedure and did not itself confer any substantive power to amend, and since "law" in Article 13(2) must be read to include constitutional amendments too. This ruling, however, threatened to freeze the Constitution and prevent even legitimate social reform, prompting Parliament to respond through the 24th Amendment, which expressly clarified that Article 368 confers full power on Parliament to amend any provision of the Constitution, including Part III.

The matter reached its final and most celebrated resolution in Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala, decided by a thirteen-judge bench, the largest ever assembled by the Supreme Court. By a majority of seven to six, the Court overruled Golak Nath and held that Parliament does possess the power to amend fundamental rights, but this power is not unlimited — it cannot be used to alter or destroy the "basic structure" of the Constitution. Chief Justice Sikri, reading the Preamble alongside the fundamental importance of individual freedom and the objectives of economic and social justice, concluded that the word "amend" in Article 368 could not be stretched to permit Parliament to abrogate fundamental rights out of existence, though reasonable abridgement in the public interest remained permissible. This doctrine was tested and reaffirmed in Minerva Mills Ltd. v. Union of India, where the Court struck down clause 4 of the 42nd Amendment for according unlimited primacy to all Directive Principles over Articles 14 and 19, holding that the harmony and balance between fundamental rights and directive principles is itself part of the basic structure, and that Parliament's amending power, being limited, cannot be enlarged into an unlimited one.

Illustrations from the Property Rights Saga

The trajectory of the right to property offers a vivid illustration of how amendability actually plays out in practice. Faced with judicial invalidation of zamindari abolition laws on grounds of inadequate compensation, Parliament inserted Article 31A through the First Amendment to protect agrarian reform legislation from challenge under Articles 14, 19, and the then-existing Article 31. When the Ninth Schedule, introduced through Article 31B, expanded from a modest thirteen laws to nearly three hundred, immunising an ever-widening range of legislation from fundamental rights scrutiny, the Court intervened once more in I.R. Coelho v. State of Tamil Nadu, holding that laws inserted into the Ninth Schedule after 24 April 1973 — the date of the Kesavananda judgment — remain open to challenge if they damage the basic structure, particularly the essence of rights under Articles 14, 19, and 21. Eventually, the 44th Amendment in 1978 removed the right to property from Part III altogether, converting it into a mere constitutional right under Article 300A, illustrating that while fundamental rights can indeed be amended or even excised, the process itself is now permanently subject to basic structure review.

Judicial Creativity in Expanding Rights

Beyond the amendability debate, the Supreme Court has also shown remarkable creativity in reading new rights into the text of Part III, particularly under the expansive language of Article 21. Following Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India, which held that the procedure depriving a person of life or liberty must be fair, just, and reasonable, the Court derived from Article 21 rights that were never expressly mentioned in the constitutional text — the right to privacy in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, the right to a speedy trial in Hussainara Khatoon v. State of Bihar, the right to free legal aid in M.H. Hoskot v. State of Maharashtra, and the right to a clean environment in M.C. Mehta v. Union of India, among many others. This shows that fundamental rights, though textually fixed, are not static categories frozen in 1950 but continue to grow through judicial interpretation to meet the evolving needs of Indian society, all the while remaining tethered to the basic structure that Parliament itself cannot touch.