all groups and religious affiliations and extending citizenship to all within its borders. Argument was not just about citizenship, as discourse quickly shifted to the role of the Burmese military, now known as the Tatmadaw. Many supported Aung San’s idea of a conventional military which would act as the armed forces of the state under civilian control. Other people favored total military control (Ibrahim, 2016). One of the people who favored absolute military power was Ne Win. A former BIA member, Ne Win headed the Revolutionary Council (RC), a socialist faction also concerned with promoting military prowess in Burma. In 1962 Ne Win and the RC executed a coup and effortlessly toppled the democratic system previously in place under U Nu. That action effectively established military dominance that would continue for the next half-century. The RC introduced a new ideology called the Burmese Way to Socialism, which brought with it a significant decline in the country’s economic and political health. The new generals also supported the Buddhist hierarchy in order to gain legitimacy among the masses, and therein began the equation of Burmese national identity with Buddhism. The Tatmadaw integrated Buddhism as the state religion and since there was no homogenous ethnic identity, religion became the foremost criterion for being Burmese (Ibrahim, 2016). By the 1970s, the Tatmadaw was established as the single most dominant institution in Burma. In 1974, the RC passed a new Socialist Constitution to replace the democratic one drawn up with the British just before independence. The Tatmadaw insisted that a parliamentary democracy was not a sufficient government system for Burma. The new constitution officially made Burma a one-party state and entrenched 10