Article 18 — Abolition of Titles

(1) No title, not being a military or academic distinction, shall be conferred by the State. (2) No citizen of India shall accept any title from any foreign State. (3) No person who is not a citizen of India 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. (4) 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.

Source: Constitution of India, as published by the Ministry of Law and Justice.

The abolition of titles was one of the Constitution's clearest anti-colonial declarations. The colonial government had systematically created Indian titles such as Rai Bahadur, Khan Bahadur, and Dewan Bahadur as instruments of political loyalty, rewarding Indians who served British interests with honorary distinctions that set them apart from ordinary people. These titles reinforced hierarchy and undermined the social equality that independence was meant to bring. B.R. Ambedkar and other framers saw the continuation of such titles as incompatible with republican democracy. The article draws from the American Constitution's prohibition on titles of nobility and the French Revolutionary rejection of formal aristocracy. A notable subsequent development: the Bharat Ratna and Padma awards were introduced by the government in 1954 and were challenged as titles under Article 18. The Supreme Court in Balaji Raghavan v. Union of India (1996) held that these awards, conferring no privileges and no hereditary distinction, are not titles within the meaning of Article 18.

• Article 14
• Article 51A

Last reviewed: 3 July 2026