Article 18: Titles

In one line

The State may not confer a title, a citizen may not accept one from a foreign State, and a national award is not a title provided nobody puts it in front of their name.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: article 18(1) provides that NO TITLE, NOT BEING A MILITARY OR ACADEMIC DISTINCTION, shall be conferred by the State. Article 18(2) provides that no citizen of India shall accept any title from any foreign State. Article 18(3) provides that no person who is not a citizen shall, WHILE HE HOLDS ANY OFFICE OF PROFIT OR TRUST UNDER THE STATE, accept without the consent of the President any title from any foreign State. Article 18(4) provides that no person holding any office of profit or trust under the State shall, WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF THE PRESIDENT, accept any present, emolument or office of any kind from or under any foreign State. In Balaji Raghavan v. Union of India a Constitution Bench held that the National Awards do not amount to "titles" within article 18(1) and should not be used as suffixes or prefixes, and that a recipient who does so should forfeit the award.

Why an article about titles sits among the equality rights

Because a hereditary title is a permanent legal inequality. The Court's reasoning in Balaji Raghavan is the answer, and it should be reproduced: hereditary titles of nobility CONFLICT WITH THE PRINCIPLE OF EQUALITY in so far as they create a SEPARATE, IDENTIFIABLE CLASS of people who are distinct from the rest of society and have access to SPECIAL PRIVILEGES; and titles which are not hereditary but carry SUFFIXES OR PREFIXES have the same effect, though in lesser degree.

And because of the history. The Court noted that the Indian Constitution may be unique in requiring that awards conferred by the State are not to be used as suffixes or prefixes, and that the difference is born of the peculiar problems these titles created in pre-independence India and the earnest desire of the framers to prevent their repetition.

So article 18 is not a curiosity. It is the equality code operating on STATUS rather than on treatment, which is the same subject as article 17, where the status abolished was a disability rather than a privilege. A candidate who pairs articles 17 and 18 in an answer is reading Part III correctly.

The four clauses

18(1), the prohibition on conferment. No title, NOT BEING A MILITARY OR ACADEMIC DISTINCTION, shall be conferred by the State. Two exceptions are written into the clause: a military distinction and an academic one. So a gallantry decoration and a degree or a professorship are outside it.