An Indian-origin law student at Oxford University, Viraansh Bhanushali, has gone viral worldwide after a hard-hitting speech at the Oxford Union. Speaking during a student debate on security and terrorism, Bhanushali strongly challenged Pakistan’s record by citing incidents and timelines rather than rhetoric — even declaring, “we’ll keep our powder dry.” His confident delivery and sharp arguments have sparked intense discussion online, with many praising his composure and preparedness during the debate.
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#ViraanshBhanushali #OxfordUnion #OxfordDebate #ViralSpeech #PakistanDebate #IndiaPakistan #StudentDebate #OxfordUniversity #TerrorismDebate #TrendingNews #ViralVideo #IndianStudent #GlobalDebate #OxfordSpeech #BreakingNews
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NewsTranscript
00:00Mr. President, honorable members of the union, our distinguished guests on the proposition bench,
00:05thank you for the flow. I rise today, the day after the solemn anniversary that haunts every
00:12Mumbai car, to oppose the motion that India's policy towards Pakistan is populism disguised
00:19as security policy. Apologies for the mic. In plain terms, I stand here to tell you that not
00:25only is this claim false, but it is a fundamental misreading of my country's reality. And I do so
00:31not just as a member of the Oxford Union, but as a Mumbaiker, but as someone who has lived through
00:37the consequences of the India-Pakistan saga in his own home and heart. Yesterday was 26-11,
00:45November 26th, which in my city is not an ordinary date on the calendar. It marks the day when in 2008,
00:5210 terrorists stormed across iconic sites across my hometown, unleashing three days of bloodshed.
00:59One of those targets was Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj terminus, the very station that my aunt passed
01:05through almost every evening. By chance or by providence, she took a different train home that
01:10night, narrowly escaping the fate of the 166 souls that did not. Another target was the Taj Mahal
01:17Palace Hotel, where my best friend's father, a major in the National Security Guard, was one of
01:22the first commandos to tripel into a burning inferred hope. I was a schoolboy, then, glued to the
01:29television as my city burnt. I remember the fear in my mother's voice on the phone, the tension in my
01:36father's clenched jaw. For three nights, Mumbai did not sleep, and neither did I. As a child, I learned
01:43much too early that security is not an abstract policy issue. It is the difference between life
01:50and death. The difference between a phone call from a loved one or a silence that lasts forever.
01:56I share this, not to darken the mood, but to ground this debate in reality. For me, this isn't just an
02:02intellectual exercise. It's painfully personal. The railway station, 200 meters from my childhood
02:08home, was bombed in the 1993 serial blast that killed over 250 people. I grew up under the shadows
02:15of these tragedies. My parents, who are here in the chamber tonight, listening anxiously to their son,
02:20raised me with the stories of those dark days and the mantra that we must always be alert.
02:26So when someone claims that India's tough stance towards Pakistan is merely populism masquerading
02:31as security policy, you might understand why I bristle. It sounds like someone telling you
02:37that the locks on your doors are just for show, not because there are robberies in the neighbourhood.
02:43But before we delve deeper into that notion, let me first address the three gentlemen arrayed
02:49against me. A rather formidable proposition bench, if there ever was one. They say this house loves a
02:55good show. My opponents have certainly delivered on the casting. First, we have our union president,
03:01Mr. Musa Haraj, leading the charge for the proposition. Musa is not only the president of this union,
03:06he's also a Pakistani by birth and a very, very dear friend of mine. In fact, as his chief of staff,
03:12I've spent months working with him, which makes tonight a tad bit awkward because technically
03:16I'm supposed to make him look good. But here I am last night writing his speech for him.
03:22Musa, you haven't, you've had an interesting term, haven't you? Just a few weeks ago,
03:35he said that.
03:36One more information.
03:37Yes.
03:37So you're admitting in a chamber that what I just said was written by an Indian, you.
03:41I should gladly admit that sometimes it takes an Indian to clean up the incompetence of a
03:52Pakistani.
03:53Now, Musa, you've had an interesting term, haven't you? Just a few weeks ago, Musa survived
04:07a historic no-confidence vote right here in the Oxford Union. For the uninitiated, yes,
04:12Oxford Union presidents sometimes face more rebellions than actual heads of state. The
04:17vote failed and Musa sailed through unscathed with a thumping majority, making him arguably
04:22the only Pakistani origin leader in history to face a no-confidence vote and remain in power
04:28the next morning.
04:34I tease my friend, of course, but there's a serious point. Musa's victory was a triumph
04:40of transparent, open and democratic processes. An Oxford Union specialty. Now, now, now, now.
04:48Only if some folks in Raal Pindi could say the same. And look who sits with you. The glorious
04:55ghost of the presidency's past.
04:59We have Ahmed Nawaz, the president for Michaelmas Term 2022. Ahmed, you're a man of resilience.
05:05You survived the horrors of the APS attack. You have my utmost respect for that for the
05:09rest of my life. But you also survived, barely so, the internal politics of this chamber.
05:16You hold a unique distinction of being the only Pakistani president in history who was not
05:20removed by a coup, but an auto-resignation. An auto-resignation for missing access committee
05:27meetings. Now, the official record says that you were busy. We all saw the Instagram stories
05:33of using shots with Bad Baby. Now, does an Oxford Union president have to be caught outside?
05:39Following on, we have Isra Khan, the president of Hillary Term 2025. Isra, this is a special
05:47moment for me. In my first time here, you were Ahmed's chief of staff. You were the man behind
05:53the throne. You watched him fall. You fought the dirty politics. And like a true survivor,
05:59you climbed the ladder to become president yourself. I'm the chief of staff now. I have seen the
06:08walk that you've walked. I have taken notes. You taught me that the Oxford Union, like in
06:13Islamabad, chaos isn't a pit. Chaos is a ladder. So when I look at you over there, arguing against
06:19India, having mastered British institutional survivalism, I don't know whether to rebut
06:24you or ask you for a reference letter. Now, are we all acquainted with the spirit of the
06:30Oxford Union debate? A bit of bite, a bit of banter. Let's get to the meat of the matter.
06:35The motion asserts that India's policy towards Pakistan is populism disguised as security policy.
06:41In other words, that India cynically fashions its Pakistan strategy just to win votes or applause
06:46rather than genuinely protect itself. As the first speaker of the opposition, I reject this
06:50wholeheartedly. I will show you, step by step, how India's policy is primarily driven by legitimate
06:56security concerns and not cheap populism. And in doing so, I shall also flip the mirror to our friends
07:02because if any nation has suffered from the leaders who wrap themselves in the flag of
07:05popularity, it isn't India, it is Pakistan. The proposition's argument is seductive. It
07:11suggests that the Indian states manufacture its threats. We invent buggy men, that we use
07:15the border as a ballot box to whip up votes. They argue that when India strikes back, we're
07:19not protecting our citizens. We're performing for them. To win this debate, I do not need to
07:25use rhetoric. I simply need to use a calendar. If the proposition is true, if the Indian security
07:31policy is just populism, then crises should corroborate with the elections. The bombs should go off
07:36when the polls open. Let us look at the data and let us be inductive. I grew up in the heart
07:42of Mumbai. My home was not too far from where in March 1993, RDX explosives ripped through
07:50Plaza Cinema. It was a part of a coordinated series of 12 blasts that turned my city into a
07:56morgue. 257 people died. I was not born there. But I grew up with the crater it left in our
08:02psyche. Now ask yourself, was there an election in March 1993? No. That election was three years
08:09away. Was the government looking for a populist distraction? No. The government was weak. The
08:14economy was opening up and we were desperate for stability. Terror did not come because we
08:19needed a vote. It came because Dawood and the ISI wanted to fracture India's financial spine.
08:25That was not populism. That was an act of war. I remember my aunt, once again, vividly,
08:33travelling through Chaturabadi Shriwaji Terminus. She put out of the train station at 9.27pm
08:37and the terrorists entered at 9.30pm. Three minutes is the difference between my aunt watching
08:42from home tonight and her being engraved in a memorial stone in South Bombay. Ten men
08:48held the city of 20 million hostage. Now look at the policy response. The proposition says
08:53that India's populist. What would a populist government do after 2611? The public rage was
08:58nuclear. I remember it. We wanted blood. We wanted the air force to flatten the training
09:03camps in Mudarki. A populist leader would have just launched the jets to win the next election.
09:08But the government of the day, the Congress party, chose strategic restraint. They chose
09:12diplomacy. They chose to send dossiers. They appealed to the international community. They
09:18appealed to you. Did it work? Did it buy us? Did the non-populist approach buy us peace?
09:25No. It bought us Patankot. It bought us Uri. It bought us Pulwama. We learned a hard lesson,
09:31Mr. President. You cannot shame a state that has no shame. Let's move to the present. Six
09:37months ago, the proposition claims the skirmishes this May were electioneering. Check the dates.
09:42The elections for the Indian General Parliament were over. The government was secure. Apologies.
09:49The government was secure. On 22nd of April, terrorists from the resistance front, a cheap
09:54rebrand of the Lashkar-e-Toi-ba, attacked tourists in Palgam. They dragged out 26 people and killed
10:01them for their religion. They didn't ask who they voted for. They executed them. India's
10:07response, Operation Sindhuur, was launched on the 7th of May. Note the name, Sindhuur, the
10:13vermilion mark of a Hindu wife. It was not Operation Thunder or Operation Wrath. It was named for
10:18the widows created by that massacre. It was a surgical dismantling of nine launchpads. We
10:24degraded radar systems in Lahore. We punished the perpetrators. And then what? We stopped.
10:31We did not invade. We did not occupy. We did not hold a parade in Delhi. We re-established
10:36deterrence and went back to work. That is not populism. That is professionalism.
10:45The proposition confuses popular with populist. Yes, Mr. President, defending your citizens from
10:50being murdered is popular. Providing clean water is popular. Keeping the railways safe
10:56is popular. That does not make it a trick. Populism is promising easy answers to complex
11:01problems. Security is doing the hard, expensive, dangerous work of ensuring that a child in
11:06Dadar can go to the cinema without being blown up. But if you want to see the actual populism
11:15disguise as security, you must only look across the Radcliffe line. When India launched Operations
11:20Indoor, how did Pakistan respond? Did it fix its security gaps? No. Operation Bunyan Al Masoos
11:25was launched. The solid cemented wall, a Quranic reference, designed not for tactical efficacy,
11:30but for religious mobilization. You launched missiles at our bases in Udhampur, had them shot
11:35down, had 11 bases struck, and achieved at best a tactical stalemate. And then, after all of that,
11:43what do you do? You release a music video. The ISPR, your military's PR wing, released an anthem,
11:51Dharkan Pe Ek He Naam Pakistan. Mr. President, when India fights a war, we debrief the pilots. In
11:56Pakistan, they autotune the chorus. You held victory rallies on the 16th of May. You declared a national
12:02holiday. Why? Because you cannot give your people bread, so you must give them the circus. You cannot
12:07fix the price of flour, so you fixate on the Indian threat. You need the enemy of the gate. Without
12:13the Indian monster, your own people may turn around and ask, why generals own Papa John's franchises,
12:19why the country defaults on its loans? That is populism. That is the alchemy of turning public
12:25poverty into private power with the specter of war. When you vote for this motion, you are telling the
12:31widows of Palgam that their grief is just a prop for the government. You are telling my parents
12:35sitting right there that the fear that they felt when the windows shook in 93, or the panic they
12:40felt when my aunt didn't answer the phone in 2008 was just a disguise. It's easy to deconstruct
12:46security policy in the Oxford Union. Our walls are thick, our windows are well plastered. The world
12:52feels safe. We can debate narratives and discourse over port and she's, but out there in the real
12:57world, the wolf is at the door. India has decided to stop feeding the wolf. We've decided to stop
13:04sending it dossiers. We have decided to shoot it. That is not populism. That is the biological
13:11imperative of a nation that refuses to die. We do not want war. We want to be boring neighbors.
13:16We want to trade onions and electricity. We want to play your cricket team without worrying if the
13:21away team is bringing bats is C4. But until the state that defends itself stops using terror as an
13:29instrument of foreign policy, we will keep our powder dry, we will keep our radars on, and we
13:33will keep our guards up. If that is populism, then I am a populist. If that is a disguise, then I will
13:38wear it because the alternative is not liberalism. The alternative is 2611 on repeat. Tonight, I may have
13:47been belligerent in defending my country's stance, but I also hope that I've been fair and factual.
13:52I do not hate Pakistan. I truly wish to see a Pakistan that is safe, stable, prosperous, and at
13:59peace with us. I dream of a day where I could take a train from Mumbai to Lahore and have kawabs in
14:05Gawamandi, or when the Indian cricket team captain and the Pakistani cricket team captain can joke about
14:09their schools, their kids' schools, because politics has ceased to matter. I'm an idealist by heart,
14:15but unfortunately, I'm a realist by circumstance. But for that day to come, we must first deal in
14:21truth. And the truth is, calling India's Pakistan policy, populism in disguise, is a dangerous
14:25distortion. It implies that we're all just play-acting, that there's no wolf on the door,
14:30but there is. Recognizing this wolf doesn't mean we should keep living in fear of it. It just means
14:35that we need to know to have the bigger stick when you're trying to build the bigger fence.
14:40Perhaps, in a not-so-distant future, a young debater from Mumbai and a young debater from Lahore,
14:47Keta, or Peshawar, will stand here not to argue about war and policy, but to argue about who has
14:53the better music, or who has the better biryani. Obviously, the answer to both is India.
14:59Jokes aside, that is the debate I want to have. We aren't there yet. To get there, we must first
15:05ensure that policy is rooted in reality and security, and not lost in the fog of propaganda.
15:10India is doing its part by treating security with the gravity it deserves.
15:14Populism, we leave to the TV studios. Ladies and gentlemen, I beg you to oppose the motion. Thank you.
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