 "'Operation Manhoos ki phati hui Baniyan': Pakistan claims false victory after skipping Oxford Union debate. Image: X")
A high-profile Oxford Union debate on India’s policy towards Pakistan collapsed on Thursday night after the Pakistan delegation failed to show up on time, triggering a stand-off and forcing the event’s cancellation minutes before it was scheduled to begin, according to a report from The Times of India.
Debate in disarray as Pakistan team stays missing
The debate — on the motion “This House believes that India’s policy towards Pakistan is a populist strategy sold as security policy” — had been organised by Oxford Union president Moosa Harraj, a British-Pakistani and the son of Pakistan’s federal defence production minister Muhammad Raza Hayat Harraj. The Union did not publicly announce the list of speakers.
Senior advocate J Sai Deepak arrived in London after flying in from Delhi, conducting his court hearings remotely just to attend the event. He was joined last minute by UK-based J&K activist Manu Khajuria and dharmic scholar Pt Satish K Sharma. Former Army Chief Gen MM Naravane and Dr Subramanian Swamy had withdrawn earlier. Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi and marketing consultant Suhel Seth were approached too late. Chaturvedi said the Union had contacted her briefly in July and again on November 25.
Oxford Union admits Pakistan speakers weren’t arriving
Sai said that as the Indian side prepared to leave on November 27, he received a call from the Oxford Union at 3.13 pm local time informing him that the Pakistan delegation had not landed in London. At 4.55 pm, Harraj admitted he had known since 10 am that Pakistan’s speakers — former joint chiefs of staff committee chairman Zubair Mahmood Hayat and former foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar — would not be attending.
Pakistan’s conflicting story raises suspicion
On Friday, however, Sai said he learned that the Pakistan delegation had in fact arrived in Oxford — raising suspicion that the confusion was engineered to let Pakistan spin a narrative of Indian withdrawal. He called the event “shambolic” and accused the Oxford Union of acting as a “mouthpiece for the Pakistan High Commission.”
‘Operation Manhoos ki phati hui Baniyan’: Sai
Sai Deepak dubbed the episode “Operation Manhoos ki phati hui Baniyan”, saying, “Instead of conducting a civil debate, the Oxford Union has allowed Pakistan to claim a false victory. Had we known their team was in Oxford, we would have debated them. If they are still there, they should find the courage to face us — instead of doing an Operation Manhoos ki phati hui Baniyan, where Pakistan’s defence minister couldn’t even produce evidence of their so-called success.”
Pakistan High Commission pushes misleading narrative
At 2.44 pm on Thursday, the Pakistan High Commission in London posted a misleading tweet claiming the Indian delegation had withdrawn. It accused India of lacking the confidence to defend its Pakistan policy in a “rules-based forum” and alleged that Indian speakers preferred “partisan media platforms” over a neutral debate.
The controversy was triggered entirely by this claim, with the High Commission asserting that its speakers — Hina Rabbani Khar, former army general Zubair Mahmood Hayat, and Pakistan’s envoy to the UK Mohammad Faisal — were already in London and ready to travel to Oxford. This narrative now appears increasingly doubtful given the Union’s own communication and the contradictory sequence of events highlighted by the Indian speakers.