Why does the Indian Constitution have so many Amendments?

It’s an interesting fact that the American constitution has had just 27 Amendments since 1776 while the Indian Constitution is already in the 195th Amendment. Is it because the Indian Constitution is flawed or is there something more than meets than eye?
The Americans occupied an empty land. Destroyed all the cultures that existed there and created rules for just one type of people with just one religion, one language and with nothing to worry about. They inherited a largely unoccupied continent and went about plundering nature.
India on the other hand has been occupied for over 5000 years. There are a thousand dialects and twelve official languages. There are colors and diversity that can easily beat the entire planet. There are a thousand religions with a billion gods. There are muslims shouting out that they have the greatest god, there are hindus Beating drums and christians ringing bells at their masses. How can one ever make a single piece of document to provide  a single law to govern so many varieties of people? One idea that was used was to use the best from every other culture in the world. The best of the Irish, the french, the german, the russian and the American  constitutions were incorporated in this mega document.
Now is it surprising if such a huge constitution governing such a huge variety of populace to not foresee a problem with integration or some small aspect that did not address the specific problem of a particular groups sub-sects's sect?

That's exactly why there are so many amendments to the Indian Constitution.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Modern day US (circa 2012) might be the most diverse place on the planet. You got people immigrating from all over the world. But one thing that has united such a diverse population is the English language.

India on the other hand is divided because of many languages. There is no one identity. It's either I'm Tamil, or Telugu or Gujarati, or Bengali, or Punjabi etc. I mean just look at the movies. A popular film gets remade 4-5 times! This is the essential cause of the divide.

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