India's Constitution of 1950 was, on the whole, a creation of the Western spirit, superimposed on a society and a culture with a complex traditional legal system. But constitutions are more than simply legal texts which can be adopted at will; they are also means of cultural self-portrayal and mirrors of cultural heritage. This is illustrated here by an analysis of the tortuous history of the Basic Structure Doctrine in India's constitutional discussions. Although this doctrine, developed by Carl Schmitt during the time of the Weimar Republic in Germany, was introduced to India by the Supreme Court in order to reduce the flood of constitutional amendments, it soon underwent major reinterpretations and later referred to overarching principles of the Constitution. In this way the Constitution became permeable to some of the surviving traditional legal concepts of India. An appendix provides a comparison with the unwritten principles of the Canadian Constitution. In contrast to the Indian situation, the Canadian unwritten principles have no superlegal status and the written constitutional rules take precedence over them. Any constitutional amendment realized according to the prescribed procedure is legal, and no higher principle would provide legal continuity.