 So today I will talk about rethinking the idea of civilian control. Now the question at the heart of any study in civil military relations is very deceptively simple. Who will guard the guardians. On one hand the military must be strong enough to protect the state, but then on the other, just as the military must protect the state from enemies. It must also not use its force to destroy the state, or the society it needs to protect. So this is a classic civil military problematic as Peter fever calls it. The idea that the very institution that is created to protect the polity is then given sufficient power to actually become a threat to the polity. So that has to answer this question and created the whole subfield of scholars from various disciplines trying to create normal normative or theoretical or empirical frameworks to examine civil military relations and answer this question. So what I will do today is this paper will explore an alternative approach to the idea of civilian control over the military. It states with weaker institutional systems. It argues that institutions for civilian control need to go just beyond considering effective civilian control over the military. Instead, it also needs to focus on robust civilian controls or institutional controls for civilian leaders. So to get to that I will first give a brief overview of civil military relations literature, and it's focused on the idea of civilian control. I will first explain civilian control what it is, and how it manifests in democracies. Following this, the paper will undertake a brief analysis of civil military relations in India over two decades, and especially focusing on civil military relations in India during wartime from 1947 to 1971. So, just going back to the question of who guards the guardians, or the civil military problematic. Well, the question at the core of civil military relations study has been examined by political philosophers for centuries. However, the birth of the modern discipline can largely be traced back to the anti military militarism literature after the First World War. So this anti militarism literature basically talked about military force and its dangers, especially as viewed through the horrors of the First World War. The second wave of literature on CMR, which is civil military relations came during the Cold War. So the proliferation of work on the subject during the period was scholars trying to reconcile the idea of having a large standing army with the idea of liberty for an American state and how that standing army could be a threat to that liberty. So this was a period which actually saw contented soldier and the state published in 1957. And this was quite a watershed moment for civil military relations literature and theory. After soldier and the state, the literature split into sort of two branches. So one branch was dominated by sociologists and was basically an examination of the institution of the military, first in the US and then in other nations. The second branch spoke to the other important geopolitical shift that was occurring in the 50s and the 60s, which was a proliferation of literature examining post colonial civil military relations and countries that were newly becoming independent. So this branch mainly focused on the problem of coups. So most authoritarian regimes, ethically divided societies, or authoritarian societies. There was another fourth wave after the Vietnam War, where there was a resurgence of work surrounding civil military relations, but primarily empirical. So there was a move away from theory into empirics. However, this was again based squarely within the American experience. And this is a military relations literature and especially that with a theoretical focus is overwhelmingly concerned with the question of how to prevent military subversion of political power. This is for good reason, as the military has the power and the capacity to overthrow democratic government. The very nature of the intellectual history of CMR points to a very important shortcoming, and that is that it draws on a Western centric idea of what relations between militaries and civilian societies should be. It is rooted in what was primarily either the European or American experience of armies and systems of governance. Traditional theoretical understandings highlight the importance of civilian control over the military and engage in normative debates about the most effective way to enforce this control, especially in democracies. However, these traditional theories operate within societies with strong and very defined institutional spaces for civil military interaction. To explain and grapple with civil military relations problems prevalent in states with weak institutional structures and the other hand, the focus needs to shift from civilian control over the military to a need for greater control over the civilians themselves. The problem in states with weak institutions as I will show later in this paper is not just about coups or about military takeovers of democratic power. In fact, it is quite the opposite. I think civil military relations and democracies merely through a prison of prison of civilian control prevents us from being aware of the increased risk of politicization of the military that such environments with weak institutional controls present. Let's go through an explanation of what civilian control really is to try and clarify this further. So democracies have various mechanisms that assist civilian governments in exercising control over the military. The most direct representation of this control is the chain of command. So the military answers to and acts on orders from the civilian head of government. So civil military relations could be restricting military recruitment from certain social groups. So, a strategy that was employed by the colonial British government in India, or quick record division of labor, where civilians grant autonomy to the military in operational matters which are not that important in exchange for military acceptance of overall subordination. With this there are various institutional oversight mechanisms, which also help civilian governments to effectively manage and control the military. These controls are often represented in the structures of higher defense organization of the democracy, which defines the spheres of civilian and military influence, while also setting limits on them. The more ad hoc approach to civilian control is through the influence of personal networks relationships incentives or patronage. However, this practice risks militarizing, sorry politicizing the military. All of this thinking and most of this thinking surrounding civil military relations and especially in democracies is therefore focused on the idea of civilian control mechanisms enacted through various institutions. However, the inherent lack of effective institutional control on the civil military dynamic in nations with reconstitutional structures means that it is primarily contingent upon the civilian leadership to give space to the military, so they can present their views. In fact, as the examination of CMR in India will show, when the civilian leadership does actually choose to give space to the military in such situations and on certain issues. The extent of the space is also decided by individual civilian leaders, rather than being outlined within robust institutional frameworks. This in turn has very tangible consequences on the civil military balance as it opens up space for the politicization of the military. And it is a scenario that is central to discussions about the civil military dynamic in India today. So, I argue that strong institutions are needed, not just to shape how the civilian leadership can effectively control the military, but for the control of the civilian leadership to the notion of civilian control, which is central to most normative work in the field, therefore needs to be examined from a different perspective. What this will do is it will help create a theoretical space for normative ideas about civil military relations in states where institutional spaces for this interaction, or indeed most public institutions are weak and susceptible to politicization by individuals by civilian leaders, by relationships, or by personal motivations. Therefore, the theory of civilian control, if I can call it that, that this paper will propose, is that institutions for civilian control need to go beyond considering civilians controlling the military. No theoretical or empirical space actually currently exists in CMR literature to that end. But then, why does it matter. So far we've examined this issue theoretically. But why does any of this matter to explain, I will turn to a brief explanation of Indian CMR. So in February 2019, the Indian Air Force launched an unprecedented airstrike on alleged terrorist bases in Pakistan. And in the middle of that debate about whether Prime Minister Modi should take credit for this military action or how much. There came what was turned by an analyst as an own goal of epic proportions. In a television interview about the airstrikes the Indian Prime Minister declared that he had overridden expert military concerns about bad weather. The airstrikes based on his raw wisdom that in fact clouds would help Indian jets avoid detection by Pakistani radar. This admission was in line with a trend over the past few years, but political parties have used military symbols to project and promote nationalism. In what a scholar calls a pure competition of one upmanship on an issue of serious national security import. Recently, 150 military veterans wrote to the Prime Minister against increasing politicization of the Indian armed forces. However, while the debate is reset has gained new resurgence. The key concerns about politicization are not new. This time can actually retrace back to the beginning of the Indian state as a political entity at independence in 1947. Very briefly at a few cases from India of civil military interaction during wars. I hope this examination will highlight the graduate erosion of civil military spaces for interactions due to weak institutional frameworks and how that in turn led to an increasing trend towards the politicization of the military. So at the fundamental level, institutional controls on the military in India included higher defense bodies like the Defense Committee of Cabinet, which we've talked about in a second and played a key role in the first Kashmir war in 1948. As well as there was a reorganization of defense expenditure after independence. In late August 1947, any decision making about an authorization of defense expenditure came under the purview of the legislature, so it gave the civilian authority, final fiscal control over matters of defense. The most robust of these institutional measures remain the financial controls. However, other defense institutions in the form of regulatory bodies and committees, which there was a proliferation of gradually weakened over the decades. The Defense Committee of Cabinet actually sees to be a functioning body as early as the 1950s. Now one would assume if you followed the train of thought of civilian control that this would weaken civilian control over the military. In India, this actually led to an increase in civilian control. All of this institutional regulatory framework instead created space for another type of civilian control exercised by successive governments that of personal relationships, networks and incentives. This contributed significantly to civilian overreach in the absence of other institutional mechanism, eventually politicizing the military. So we'll just start with the first Kashmir war, which broke out in October 1947, barely three months after both India and Pakistan became independent. The cast of characters is on the screen. You have the first commander in chief, the second commander in chief Sir Roy Butcher who was in charge of the military through the war, the first Prime Minister, Jeval Raleh Nehru and Mount Batten, who played a key role in handling the civil military divide. So armed raiders in October 1947 captured a power station that supplied power to the city of Jammu. And it plunged the city into darkness. The Maharaja of the Kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir, who was until then dithering over whether to join India or Pakistan, fled to Delhi, signed the instrument of accession, made the Indian state then sent troops to Kashmir to engage with the raiders, eventually turning this military engagement into a confrontation between India and Pakistan. The decision making and civil military interaction during this war, mainly occurred during the meetings of the Defense Committee of the Cabinet that I mentioned before or the DCC. The DCC was a body built on the framework of the secretariat, which evolved during the interwar years in the UK. It was headed by the Indian Prime Minister, included the Deputy Prime Minister, the Defense Minister, Minister for Information Broadcasting. All meetings also have to be attended by the commanders in chief of the three forces, the Governor General Lord Mount Batten, the Defense Secretary and the financial advisor. What's on the screen is one of the minutes from the very beginning of the operations in Jammu and Kashmir from a DCC meeting then. And if you look at the people in attendance, it's quite a good mix of the highest rungs of civilian and military decision making and and that was maintained throughout this body met every couple of days, if not every day through the crisis or every time there was a new development. And these were the people who are in attendance. So the DCC therefore presented a relatively robust institutionalization of civil military interaction. It remains central to decision making throughout this 13 month long conflict. It created space for military and civilian leaders to engage with each other. However, despite this space, two trends were seen in civil military interaction during the first Kashmir war. First decision making remained completely under civilian control. So despite a strong military leadership being unafraid to voice their concerns to civilian leaders. It was a civilian leadership's willingness to escalate the conflict and use force which shaped the trajectory of decision making. An example is a strategy to be employed for Kashmir. So while the military was laboring under a shortage of supplies and having to deal with post partition unrest and a rebellion in Hyderabad, fighting for Kashmir was a politically important goal for the civilian leadership. And they urged escalation despite repeated opposition from the military. This disagreement manifested itself most strongly in Prime Minister Nero's refusal to withdraw from an area called Poonch in Kashmir. Military leaders were of the opinion that any expansion in the Poonch area would be mined in difficulties. However, Nero was absolutely adamant. And that's a quote from one of the army personnel sharing a memo about this meeting. And scenario is absolutely adamant that there should be no withdrawal from Poonch for political reasons. This caused great consternation and the military leadership and then Commander-in-Chief General Lockhart emphasized that a military defeat in Poonch would have worse repercussions than a military withdrawal from it. Despite the military council from multiple sources including Mountbatten, an expansion into Poonch was planned and carried out with great difficulty. So the civilian leaders had overall advice of both British commanders-in-chief as well as senior Indian operational commanders. And this was not a unique case. It occurred throughout the crisis. So the DCC, however, brought both civilian and military decision makers on the same platform to discuss everyday decision making during the crisis. It allowed for military opinions and assessments to directly reach the upper rungs of civilian decision making. In the case of democracies like India, the Prime Minister, without any intermediary, the existence of this institution also mandated regular civil military interaction throughout the crisis. This is typical of the years following independence, when there was a proliferation of such committees, which was instituted with the aim of formalizing higher defense organization, as well as regulating civil military interaction. By the late 1950s, however, the DCC had become completely defunct. The highest institutional link between the civilian and the military leadership remained this committee called the Defense Minister's Committee. This was problematic on many levels, especially because channels for any military input to the highest civilian decision makers all went through the Defense Minister. In 1962, the Defense Committee of Cabinet was replaced by a committee called the Emergency Committee of Cabinet, the DCC, which was an ad hoc committee. But there was a crucial difference between the two bodies. And like the DCC, the Emergency Committee of the Cabinet represented purely civilian views. It consisted of the Prime Minister, the Finance Minister, Defense Minister and the Foreign Minister. Its only military input came from senior military officers who were called upon to brief the Committee of Secretaries periodically in times of crisis. And this Committee of Secretaries would then feed up and feed forward to the actual emergency committee. Now, when or how often to call the military chiefs, however, was at the discretion of the members of the DCC. This committee did not mandate the service chiefs to attend meetings. And it further isolated the military leadership from civilian decision makers. This meant that any meetings and military leadership had with civilian leaders, depending on the individual connections, the individual relationships and how willing they were to enact on those. Now, the disastrous India-China war in 1962. Here you can see Prime Minister Nero and Defense Minister Krishna Menon, where India suffered a truly humiliating defeat against China, was a capstone to this deteriorating civil military communication. There was a lack of an effective institutional framework to regulate civil military dialogue. And there was a turbulent relationship between the civilian and the military leadership throughout this 1950s and early 1960s. So this at this stage for a complete breakdown of civil military decision making during India's war with China in 1962. I won't go into a great deal of detail about this war. But it was an exemplar of a crisis where excessive civilian control over a politic politicized military actually rendered a military leadership completely ineffectual, which contributed to eventually military failure. So there was a failure on all levels. The second Kashmir war was happened in 1965, a couple of years after the China war. And this was between India and Pakistan and displayed a similar trend. Here you have the Prime Minister Lal Bader Shastri. In the middle, Yeshwin Draksharan was the Defense Minister and General Chaudhary, who was the Commander-in-Chief or the Army Chief. When the time the second Kashmir war rolled around, there were some noises made to address the failures of 1962, but the existing ad hoc structure was central to decision making during the crisis. Decision makers and not institutions became the key drivers of civil military relations. An example is that the new Indian Defense Minister Yeshwin Draksharan actually set up individual morning meetings with the service chiefs to establish a line of communication with the military. He was completely his own initiative and was not supported by any formal institutional framework where beyond this the civilians in the military could or had to interact. And in addition to this ad hoc nature of the civil military relationship, civilians controlled decision making during the crisis and this is a trend that has been repeated and we saw earlier. Interestingly, they even intervene on operational decisions, which in the sort of civil military trade off are generally considered the preserve of the military. Finally, and most strikingly, the 1971 Bangladesh war saw an overt expanding of civilian institutional control during wartime and a decline in the military representations in the highest echelons of crisis decision making. Even the story of the Bangladesh war is told as the military asserting itself against the civilian leadership. But in fact for civil military relations in India, this represented an increased centralization of power in the office of the Prime Minister. The civil and leadership under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi led a reshuffle of the intelligence apparatus and ensure it was firmly under civilian control and in fact under the Prime Minister's secretary. Prime Minister Gandhi also assumed the mantle of the Home Minister and new paramilitary organizations that were created after that were also directly controlled by the Home Ministry. So, in effect, the Prime Minister had control over the intelligence apparatus and the paramilitary organizations. So these paramilitary organizations and control over them, not only a reinforced Prime Minister Gandhi's authority, but also civilian control over military matters. In fact, Stephen Wilkinson who writes, who has fascinating studies on civil military relations in India argues that these paramilitary organizations were created to play an explicit cool proofing room, especially by keeping the army out of politically dangerous deployments and the composition of these forces makes that clear so for example, the border security force which is the one of the foremost paramilitary organizations in India was commanded by a civilian director general assisted by two inspector generals who are army officers of Brigadier rank. So this ensured that while the paramilitary organizations had close contacts with the army. It also were come, they were in fact commanded by civilian leaders. This effectively sort of cool proved the system from within. So civil military relations in India at this time with us double edged. While there was no institutional forum for joint civil military decision making at the highest levels. Paramilitary organizations, which were often the first support of civil power when situation went beyond the control of local law and order forces firmly remained under direct civilian control, and especially under Prime Minister Gandhi. And attempt was then made to form a more permanent decision making body because the ad hoc nature of decision making committees had carried forward. The Cabinet Committee on political affairs CCPA was created. This was again a civilian body, it effectively led to the abolition of the ECC, which was still ongoing, and took over everything that was to do with the DCC's role as well. It was mandated that all important questions about defense were to be under the purview of this CCPA or the Cabinet Committee on political affairs going forward. However, what's striking is that despite there being this being this institutional framework, it played no real role in decision making during the Bangladesh war. Instead, a Bangladesh committee separately was created, which became the main nucleus of decision making before and during the war in 1971. This purely civilian body, which was the Bangladesh committee was created by Prime Minister Gandhi and had her closest advisors. Secondly, this Bangladesh committee, which was to take crisis throughout the war actually had no military representation. This not only demonstrated the extent of complete civilian authority over decision making in 1971, but also the vulnerability of the institutional space given to civil military interaction in India. This only was a no real body that mandated regular civil military interactions during crisis, like the Defense Committee of Cabinet in 1948. But the body that did exist and was mandated specifically for defense purposes was completely cast aside by a small group of powerful individuals within the Indian civilian hierarchy. What is notable is at no point was army chief included in the Bangladesh committee, despite the outbreak of war. And despite the inclusion of the Defense Secretary later as well. So just looking back as a brief examination shows there was a creeping politicization of the military in India in the decades after independence. The role of individuals networks relationships in a new nation with weak vulnerable or still institutions that were being shaped, therefore cannot be underestimated, especially in terms of civil military relations. It raises crucial questions about how the apolitical nature of the military can be retained when the spheres and the spaces for military and civilian interactions are not defined, nor are they protected. So our traditional theories of civil military relations, look at how best to use tools to apply civilian influence of the military. I think it is imperative to also acknowledge the inherent need to control the civilian leadership from politicizing the military, especially in societies that have weak institutions, or are organized around networks, personalities and individuals. So it is indeed important to guard the guardians. Thank you. Great. Thank you very much, Savani, for really fascinating discussion. Oh, and then we got Mark there too. So, and we do have two people in the audience, we have Hillary and Sumita. I don't know who Sumita is, but yay, we've got audience members too. So what we'll do is I have some burning questioning that I want to ask, but I'm going to be a good chair and pass this over to Mark, especially because Mark has to jet off quickly. So, Mark, do you, a floor is yours too. For any sort of discussion points for Savani. Sure. Thanks, Amanda. And thanks, Savani, for for your paper. Just really interesting. And I do a few questions for you. So to begin, I suppose I would say the sort of problem of civil military control in India. It seems to me that there's actually a lot of colonial precedence for this as well. So I suppose one of my first questions is about the extent to which this these problems, these issues you're talking about are the product of structures, legacies of colonialism itself, because I mean, during the British period, for instance, you know, since the late 18th century, the British were actually worried about an overpowerful military establishment in India, you know, Edmund Burke railed in Parliament that fear that this army would come back to Britain and sort of depose English liberties at home, sort of like the fall of Rome. I guess sort of classical CMR fears in that respect. But at the same time, there were a lot of instances in during the colonial period where civilian leaders and the military were actually blurred completely. So there are several instances where you had governors general who are also commanders in chief at the same time under Cornwallis and later bending. And then later under Dalhousie in 1840s and 50s Dalhousie actually came into a big conflict with the military establishment because he was seen to be overriding the decisions of his commander in chief to Charles Napier the Conqueror of basically Dalhousie was seen to essentially taking on the role of a commander in chief and so there's a lot of blurring and a lot of conflicts actually between the civilians and the military officials and you know this gets better later in the after 1857 and the institution of the Raj, but there's still constantly this blurring between political ends and military goals throughout the workings of the Raj I mean in many cases, civilian officers are actually military officers, or exerting power sort of you know in the frontier regions, as it were. And of course, as you know, you know that the garrison state in Punjab the sword arm of the Raj, that's the militarization of Punjab is sort of the root to a lot of the problems with Pakistan today. So I guess my, that's my long winded way of saying again you know, can you maybe talk a little bit more about to what extent is the problems you're talking about in post colonial India, products and legacies of what was going on during the colonial period. I was also wondering, you know, it seems like somewhat implicit in what you were saying but if you could maybe elaborate a little more specifically I mean what is the danger of the politicization of the military and civilians exerting control. I mean, some people would say well actually, this might not be a bad thing if the military doesn't have as much power as, as they would like. And you know, maybe it means they lose wars but you don't have coups or more threats to democracy but I think you're trying to say the opposite that it's actually can lead to greater threats to democracy I was wondering if you could just, you know, elaborate a bit more on that so I'll leave that there's a question there and look forward to your response. This afternoon I'm going to quickly jump in and then because I think Mark's last comment kind of feeds into nicely what I was thinking as one of those people thinking, what's the big deal here right. And I think that's in part because I'm not a military historian. I'm a feminist critical military studies scholar right so I come from, you know, reading a enormous amount of both theoretical and empirical scholarship on the military that says, you know, it's actually a, it's good that we have the checks and bounds for them right and it's good, you know, the militarization of communities is not a good thing for women for, you know, we should be moving away from that. So I think, you know, yeah, to, I think you have a really fascinating point here if you can, you know, articulate last point, because feminists is almost seems like a no brainer military bad civilian good now I'm totally dumbing that down right but if you can highlight actually you know the lack of accountability the nepotism, the lack of the transparency that happens in the civilian state can equally lead to devastating violence against women and all of those sorts of things I think that's a really interesting point that feminists studying military would would would warmly welcome as well too. And then just around. I just want to want it a bit more clarity on what you mean by political, because of course you know coming from my tradition. It is inherently political right that this is a very much a political space in of itself how it governs itself how it understands security security for whom at what cost how we manage our military operations is very a political questions to right so I just, I wouldn't assume that the military was ever an eight political space so I just wondered if you could. I want to comment a bit more on that, but also acknowledging that I'm not a military historian so those questions might not even be interesting to you, but this is just, you know coming from a feminist critiques but also post colonial critiques on military military operations to I'll be quite now so I'll respond to what what you fancy responding to. I mean it's all fascinating. Very quickly on the legacies question I think absolutely. If you, the way I would look at it is, separate to the institutional legacies of civilian control by the British Raj and the British government in India. Look at the relationship between the nationalist movement and the nationalist leaders in India who then later were the civilian leaders and independent India and the military so. When I look at it I look at it as, first of all there was an inherent suspicion of the military as an institution. It was used as a tool of colonial repression, most often than not. It was, however, it was also used an aid to civil programs where if there was a disaster. The military would be called in to to sort of undertake quasi humanitarian endeavors so there was a sense of suspicion and confusion about this body, which was compounded by the idea of the martial race theory. So, because of the imposition of the martial race theory, it became quite that it was very obvious that there was an attempt to have an isolated body separate to the nationalist movement. I mean you have the mutiny and you have later the Royal Navy mutiny and then the national army so it wasn't very successful but the fact that for the army and especially because the martial races, you had loyalty towards your community and towards the institution. And they were relatively insulated from big nationalist movements in fact used to again suppress them led to this, this idea of the military as as a separate body that needs to be controlled and be suspicious of. There was also the confusion of law and order versus military activity. So what I said in the sense of the what the police and then the paramilitary and then the military so in India there's even now there's a strong tradition of bringing in the paramilitary. When something happens that's beyond the police and I think that's quite significant colonial legacy of deciding when do you bring in the military. And today therefore there is a sense of trying to insulate the military from local questions of whether that is. Amanda it goes back to political even though it's a political body I think the Indian state, the Indian state project as a whole is very concerned with political unity. And with holding that political unity together so effectively the effort, even today and trying to separate law and order paramilitary army is to try and and lift the military up into a body that's that's a higher plane of not being involved in issues or that might be contentious or problematic. But then also you have this idea if you look at so the Indian National Army trials are fascinating to look at for this, where you have the, the Indian scenario actually starts off by saying the Indian National Army is does not support it it is a terrible However, I can't remember what he says, and then the British Indian Army itself disowns the offices of Indian National Army. However, once the Congress realizes that it's actually quite good currency for nationalist thought and nationalist messages and it's being celebrated, you have narrow and bullet by the side actually defense lawyers at the Indian National National Army trials. So the idea of the military is also a political tool, rather than being political institution in itself. And so when you have in 1971 in the drug on the trying to assert her political authority. You have her looking at the military as a political tool that could overthrow her, but could also be used to assert her force and independence. You have the control narrow throughout had the suspicion of the military, I mean he didn't want the military. And there's a very famous quote where he just says he, he'd rather get rid of it all. Despite that and what's interesting is through every war you talk like every war you sort of read about. He's the one arguing for military escalation and force. And then there's a discomfort then where it's the idea of what is this what is this body and then finally and this is the last point to the legacy's question is that the idea of absolute sovereignty, being tied with the idea of who controls the So, because under British rule Indians weren't part of the decision making process for defense at all. They were co opted into the war effort and there was a lot of anger about it. So there was an idea amongst the Indian nationalist leaders about, well, there's no point having dominion status as no point having political representation. If we don't control defense, if we don't control the instrument of defense which is the army so there's this overarching need to control this army so I think. If that if I haven't rambled on that these sort of three strands that interact that that really just set the scene for this is civilian leaders to see the army and to behave in it in a certain way. But I would say there's there's a lot of discomfort. I was just going to say something that was really fascinating and like this tension you're talking about this hostility towards the military but also you know the recognition of it is an important tool and a symbol and I just thinking you know also the the independence day parade which I think the first one is 1950. So under narrow but like this is this art show of militarism but at the same time there's this, you know, hostility and suspicion of it so they want to subsume it to themselves I think that's really really fascinating. It's yeah I this yeah I think that was one of my favorite bits to sort of think about when I was working on this. But yeah so I think, and then danger of politicization I think that the absolute danger is, it has the force to do what it wants. I think that if it works for the people rather than the state and this is quite a simplistic view and this is quite a normative view, but once it is susceptible to working for people and successive governments with their respective agendas. It is easier to use it as a tool for repressive measures. So that's really protecting the society. And I would look at the sort of, if you look at a structure of violence that the military can inflict on society I would say that the civilian elites are also part of that, that network. So as you never want to ideally you want to maintain the balance where the politicization or the sort of civilian elites don't actually have the chance to use the military to further their own agenda and means and, and I think there's a very real danger in India today. As well. So, and that is why I think thinking back to institutions I think institutions are important because it takes away the sense of patronage or personal loyalty or, or this sense of give and take with the networks and I think it's it's sort of instead of a political I would say deep personal. Depersonalize the institution, which I think is is healthier for democracies and I mean, there was a fascinating thing about. I was listening to talk about Trump's so that in the US the current military approaches and how politics is basically permeated and you have generals being marched out for election parades and campaigns and what this means is within the military there are sides and if in a very fundamental sense if you've got to protect the state, you can't choose to protect who you agree with. So there's, there's this idea of in a very sort of broad sense, having to deep politicize the military as an institution and prevent it from being used so that's, that's I think that. I'm going to Amanda your points about the lack of accountability and the fact that. I mean what we see in most even democratic regimes that use the military for internal law and order. What do you mean by of being used by by authoritarian leaders or authoritarian democracies which I think are quite dangerous, but was that everything. What do you mean by political. Yeah, it sort of goes back to that sense of not involved in. It's not involved in problematic situations I think and that's I think that's a colonial idea of looking at what is political. I mean, even in political discourse in India today there's there's this sort of overarching colonial legacy of or don't be political or what is political, and that's essentially anything that's considered disruptive or problematic. And I think that's what that is where I would tend to go but yeah. May I ask a brief follow up question. So I don't I don't want to know what you're leaving. You have to go in a few minutes anyway but I just wondering quickly so I mean so do you think in the case of the Indian Army then they should have been more political in say 1975 when India Gandhi. Under the Constitution should that if the Indian military had been so marginalized and kept out of the loop do you think they would have perhaps intervened and stopped that basically coup on her part. I mean Indra Gandhi was always scared of the coup. She was always terrified of it I think I don't think they would have because I think within the army itself. There is a sense of, there's a pride in a politicization, at least, even during the 70s. I think that also goes back to the institutional partitioned in army so in a way I am. I mean it's a hard question to ask I didn't think I think it's a slippery slope right, even though the army should have intervened. Where does it stop. What's happening in Pakistan that the moment the army becomes guardians of domestic happiness or satisfaction I think that's that's when it's, it's a beginning of the end of democratic rule really. It's actually kind of difficult and unfair questions I apologize. Thank you is really interesting here and you talk to me I've, I've got to go talk to undergrad cheese now so I'll jet off but thanks for the paper and very much looking forward to reading this when it's out in front. Thanks, thanks for discussing. Thanks Mark. Yeah, I was having and I could just be missing the mark here but I do feel like on both hands, you know, what you're ultimately striving or making a critique is the need for strong institutions. Right. And that not only you know how civil military conversations, but also, you know, feminists who are talking about the military say strong institution increases accountability and transparency and like you I think you're right and that's what I found that really we've fixated on the military as one that needs to be rained in right where yeah I think you really have a really interesting compelling argument to say strong institutions need to rain in civilian authorities to because just because you're a civilian authority doesn't mean you're going to be less militarized, less likely to go to war and you can demonstrate that and like less likely to use you know, militarized values as a tool for your own personal gain and building a particular nationalism right so. So yeah, these are important empirical and kind of theoretical critiques that militarism, you know, hyper masculine nationalism, you know, cavalier kind of aggressive international posturing doesn't just come from a military right but it can come from and so what we need is again the strong institutional spaces to stop civilians going rogue just as much as you know we worry about militaries going rogue so that was my anyway that's my reflection of your paper was. Well, thank you I mean yeah that's that's very that's more articulate than I would have. Yeah that's pretty much it's definitely I think I think it's fascinating because everyone's obsessed pretty much with how do you control the military but. There are several leaders who get away with a lot. And I think, and I think that because the literature is grounded in the US and the sort of UK scenario, no one, it doesn't really occur, the extent of institutional weakness doesn't really occur to a lot of people who write about it or a lot of scholars who write about it. So this is their yeah your work, you know, bringing in that post colonial kind of anxiety right and the ambivalence and the colonial legacies of that relationship with the military between the military and and civilian leaders and how that is a particular important challenge that we need to think about is, yeah it's really it's really interesting. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, thanks thanks for it was really good to just think through the questions yeah thank you. Yeah well I hope you found them useful and then when you develop craft this into a full paper please do send it my way I'd like to read it. I mean whatever commentary I can offer but I think they're you know you do also have an important contribution to make to broader conceptualizations of militarism because even still today I mean there's tariff. Sorry, right, but there's a lot of people and I think from where. And Maria Rashi did a really interesting book on the Pakistani military, but I think you know generally they're the concept of militarism what it does how it links to the state how it gets used and taken up by civilian spaces is still so Euro centric right So I think there's also an important, you know if you want another paper to a contribution to be made there and not just to the civil military literature but also how we think about militarism and how militarism gets taken up and who's responsible for it and did it. That's fascinating yeah definitely because so many of these sort of conceptions of what the military is there to do are so rooted in the colonial experience. And, and I think, I think Indian governments to this day struggle with knowing what to do with the military. Yeah, because it's such a strong colonial institution it's one of the least changed colonial institutions that exists in in democratic India today so it's. I think it's, it's so many civilian leaders in India spent so long trying to figure out what to do. And it's fascinating. It is because it makes us rethink of that of that relationship when we think about, you know, the broader advancing of militarism and masculinity and state right because of course in the United States in Canada and the UK you see, you know, the heads of state touting out the military for various reasons but it doesn't have that same sort of ambivalence and anxiety there right and that's something that I think you could flesh out a bit more like I don't think there was ever even with Trump a worry that the military was going to overthrow Trump right like there wasn't that anxiety there and he was able to use the military and it. The way that works in practice that relationship works in practice and how militarism, you know, shapes that that relationship. I think there's there's something there that could be teased out that could be an important contribution there. Yes, thank you. Oh, and Smitha looks like has a question. Can you read her question or do you want me to read it to you. New questions on polarization of public attitude attitudes in India affecting recruitment you at cohesion, how social media and hyper nationalism magnifying concerns that previous CMR episodes in India's past I mean. I think what's interesting about the current polarization of public attitudes and the role of social media is it's hard and harder to insulate the military as an institution from political discourse. And that is social media as one part of it, the nature of political discourse in India is another part of it. The third is essentially that the military has started to play more of a role in so recently there was a video circulating on social media where soldiers were doing what was I think it was like a butcher or some sort of Hindu ceremony. And they were quite mixed comments because a lot of on Twitter a lot of military veterans were saying this is ridiculous you can't do that because the military is a political, which equals a religious almost institution. There was some others were saying oh it's a nice thing that the military is doing because it humanizes them. And that's I think the danger today in with hyper nationalism and CMR today and India as opposed to. That all needs to, like, I think be unpicked or it be fascinating, because you know I think like if we look at how militaries are represented in other states so again bringing back to to the to the global north that that sort of circulation sort of contentious contention around being political like you, you know, I mean actually that's taken up right like the Canadian military the British military is all about diversity right so we want brown black white faces people you know see on all of that right and that's not seen as something suspicious in the like it would be really fascinating to tease. Why does that become so important why does it become so important for the Indian military to have that, you know that public performance of a political and why is that so important and how and then how does that make us rethink you know the role of the military in the state right or other than anxiety like there's something really interesting there. Definitely I think, and I think it's definitely the idea of what is problematic I mean, it would be interesting to see where the how the military is used by this government going forward because they have. I think that they've instituted the position of the chief of defense staff, which had been on the cards for decades and it never happened. And then they have sort of rigid the defense infrastructure. What's interesting is, even for a government that is quite hyper nationalist quite militarized in its, in its essence. Still, you still have that overreach of civilian control institutionally. So everything is tempered by an institutional civilian presence. Yeah. In it which so yeah, but yeah that's, it's fascinating. Definitely fascinating stuff. I look forward to seeing this life and seeing your book project come to life to serve me. Yeah, and you've got a comment saying great paper. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I, yeah, I can't wait to see this all come to life I want to thank you so much for being a part of the seminar series. Yeah, so let's let's keep in touch. Okay.