How the Constitution Mirrors the Universal Declaration
Chapter One Hundred Nineteen
Syllabus topic 6, "Pluralism and International Concerns".
Pages 666 to 671 of 780
In one line
Part III of the Constitution carries most of the Declaration's civil and political rights and Part IV most of its economic and social ones, and the correspondence is close enough to be worth an article-by-article table and imperfect enough to be worth an argument.
In the wording a student can write in an exam: the Universal Declaration was adopted on 10 December 1948 and the Constitution of India on 26 November 1949, so the two texts were drafted in the same years by people reading the same materials. The correspondence is structural: the Declaration's civil and political rights, articles 3 to 21, correspond to Part III, and its economic, social and cultural rights, articles 22 to 27, to Part IV. That correspondence is also the difference: what the Declaration states as a single body of rights, the Constitution divides into the ENFORCEABLE and the UNENFORCEABLE, article 37 making Part IV not enforceable by any court while declaring the principles fundamental in the governance of the country. Four of the Declaration's rights have no counterpart in Part III at all: asylum in article 14, nationality in article 15, the right to marry and found a family in article 16, and the right to property in article 17, which WAS a fundamental right until the Forty-fourth Amendment moved it to article 300A.
The table: civil and political rights
| Declaration | Constitution |
|---|---|
| 1, born free and equal in dignity and rights | Preamble; article 14 |
| 2, no distinction of any kind | Articles 14, 15(1), 16(2) |
| 3, life, liberty and security of person | Article 21 |
| 4, no slavery or servitude | Article 23 |
| 5, no torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment | Article 21, as construed; article 20(1) and 20(3) in part |
| 6, recognition everywhere as a person before the law | Article 14, "any person" |
| 7, equality before the law and equal protection | Article 14, in the same two limbs |
| 8, an effective remedy before national tribunals | Articles 32 and 226 |
| 9, no arbitrary arrest, detention or exile | Articles 21 and 22 |
| 10, fair and public hearing by an independent tribunal | Article 21 as construed; article 50 in Part IV |
| 11, presumption of innocence; no retrospective penal law | Article 20(1), and 20(2) on double jeopardy |
| 12, privacy, family, home, correspondence, honour | Article 21: Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India |
| 13, movement and residence; leaving and returning | Articles 19(1)(d) and 19(1)(e); Maneka Gandhi on travel abroad |
| 14, asylum | NO COUNTERPART |
| 15, nationality | NO COUNTERPART in Part III; Part II, articles 5 to 11, deals with citizenship |
| 16, marriage and family | NO COUNTERPART: Supriyo holds there is no fundamental right to marry |
| 17, property | REMOVED from Part III by the Forty-fourth Amendment; now article 300A |
| 18, thought, conscience and religion | Articles 25 to 28 |
| 19, opinion and expression | Article 19(1)(a) |
| 20, peaceful assembly and association | Articles 19(1)(b) and 19(1)(c) |
| 21, participation, public service, elections | Articles 326, 324 to 329; article 16(1) for public service |
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