Key Points
- Former Army Chief Naravane, Swamy, and Pilot pulled out.
- India fielded a weaker “second eleven” as replacement panel.
- Pakistani students Musa Heraj, Israr Khan, Ahmed Nawaz represented country.
- Students dismantled India’s civilisational and dharmic security arguments effectively.
- Pakistani team used law, history, and statistics as evidence.
- Indian panel’s populism-as-security claim was exposed and challenged.
- Audience voted two-thirds in favour of Pakistan’s student team.
- Victory shows Pakistan’s narrative relies on logic, not personalities.
- Oxford win proves Pakistani youth can beat India intellectually globally.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan achieved a major moral and intellectual victory at the prestigious Oxford Union debate this week, where a team of Pakistani students convincingly defeated India’s revised “civilisational/dharmic” panel with clear logic, evidence-based reasoning, and a two-thirds majority vote.
The debate took an unexpected turn after India abruptly withdrew its high-profile lineup — former Army Chief Gen Manoj Mukund Naravane, Dr Subramanian Swamy, and Congress leader Sachin Pilot — just a day before the event. Their withdrawal reportedly created significant difficulties for the Oxford Union, which had billed the session as a heavyweight intellectual contest between the two countries.
In a last-minute move, India replaced its top-tier speakers with a visibly weaker “second eleven,” comprising J. Sai Deepak, Pandit Satish Sharma, and Debarccan Banerjee.
Pakistan, in a contrasting and confident strategic decision, voluntarily stepped back from sending its own heavyweight panel of a former Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff General Zubair Mahmood Hayat, former Foreign Minister, and former High Commissioner Dr Muhammad Faisal.
🇵🇰106 vs 🇮🇳50
Victory for Pakistan narrative at the Oxford union debate against India. At the Oxford Union, Pakistani students Musa Haraj, Israr Khan Kakar, and Ahmed Nawaz Khan defeated India’s panel through logic and arguments. pic.twitter.com/Akw09qGRpw— Murtaza Ali Shah (@MurtazaViews) November 28, 2025
Instead, Pakistan opted to field its brightest young minds from Oxford itself, allowing students Musa Heraj, Israr Khan Kakar, and Ahmed Nawaz Khan — a survivor of the 2014 Army Public School (APS) Peshawar attack — to take the stage on the country’s behalf.
The Pakistani students presented structured arguments rooted in international law, political history and statistical evidence, systematically dismantling the Indian panel’s attempt to promote a “civilisational” and “dharma-based” security narrative. India’s framing of “populism as a security doctrine” was directly challenged and exposed through factual counterpoints and legal reasoning.
Despite India enjoying a numerical advantage in the audience through a sizable Indian student presence, the final vote delivered a clear verdict: the Pakistani position won with a two-thirds majority. The outcome indicated that even India’s ideological proponents could not prevail against Pakistan’s student-led arguments.
Observers described the results as a significant embarrassment for the Indian narrative at a globally respected academic forum. India’s withdrawal of its original high-profile speakers — followed by the defeat of its replacement panel — was widely read as an indicator of the fragility of its intellectual case when tested in a rigorous, rules-based environment.
For Pakistan, the win underscored the strength of its narrative not through personalities but through principles. The performance of the Pakistani students demonstrated that the country’s intellectual and moral position remains strong, confident and fully capable of standing on its merits at world-class platforms such as Oxford University.
