Lakshmi Mittal’s sponsorship of Pakistan Conference 2025 at Harvard sparks outrage amid escalating India-Pakistan tensions after Pahalgam horror
In the immediate aftermath of the barbaric Pahalgam massacre, where Pakistan-trained terrorists unleashed unspeakable horror on innocent Indian tourists—selecting their victims based on religious identity, subjecting them to degrading inspections, and executing them point blank for their inability to recite the Kalima—Indians around the world have united in grief and fury. The national sentiment is one of shock, rage, and an uncompromising demand for justice.
Yet even as the blood of innocents still stains the soil of Kashmir, a baffling and deeply disturbing development has come to light: The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South-east Asia Institute at Harvard University, heavily funded by Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, is sponsoring The Pakistan Conference at Harvard 2025.
On its website, ‘The Pakistan Conference at Harvard’ describes itself as “the largest student-led gathering on Pakistan in the United States, convening policymakers, academics, business leaders, and civil society experts to engage in critical discussions on Pakistan’s economic trajectory, governance, and global positioning.”
But beneath these lines containing word salad, it is unmistakable that it is a platform promoting Pakistani talking points, which is essentially, endorsing and propagating the Pakistani government’s agenda. It is an academic effort to project Pakistan’s soft power regardless of how insignificant or diminishing it is. But it is nevertheless an attempt through which Pakistan academia rationalise Pakistan’s state policies, which infamously includes its military doctrine of “bleeding India through a thousand cuts.”
Pakistan Conference 2025 at Harvard University website
What was shocking is that one of the partners listed on the website is The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South East Asia Institute at the Harvard University. An Indian businessman’s institute supporting a Pakistani conference is equivalent to turkeys voting for christmas.
The South Asia Institute at Harvard University is one of the sponsors of the Pakistan Conference
At a time when India is deploying several measures to isolate Pakistan for its role as a terror sponsor, such an endorsement from an Indian billionaire is not just tone-deaf—it is a betrayal.
The news of the sponsorship broke across social media like wildfire. Indian users from around the globe have expressed dismay and anger at Mittal’s decision. Hashtags like #BoycottPakistanConference and #ShameOnMittal trended on X (formerly Twitter), as thousands of netizens questioned how an Indian business icon could so callously ignore the wounds of his own people, and instead offer a platform—funded by his own generosity—to a nation whose hostility towards India is written in blood, not ink.
Adding to the sense of betrayal is the wider context of recent events. Just days before the announcement, demonstrations were held by the Indian diaspora in London, mourning the Pahalgam victims and demanding accountability. These peaceful protests were met with disruption and intimidation—again, notably—from Pakistani-origin individuals, many of whom openly voiced anti-India slogans and hurled abuses. The message could not have been clearer: even abroad, certain sections of the Pakistani diaspora continue to carry forward their government’s hateful agenda.
It is, therefore, of little doubt that the Pakistan Conference at Harvard 2025 would be anything different from what we witness in the TV studios in Pakistan and the online Pakistani social media space. It would echo the same rhetoric that Pakistanis have long championed: blaming Indian armed forces for the terror attacks that rock Kashmir and dismissing honest attempts to scrutinise Pakistan’s role in them as vindictive and borne out of its historical animosity towards Islamabad.
Given this atmosphere, the decision of a prestigious institution like Harvard’s South-east Asia Institute to sponsor a Pakistan-focused conference, and by extension endorse voices from a country that actively foments anti-India sentiment, is deeply unsettling. But more disappointing is Lakshmi Mittal’s role—or rather, his refusal to pull the plug on bankrolling a Pakistani conference.
At a time when the Indian government is leaving no stone unturned to pressurise the Pakistan government to relinquish its support for terror, Lakshmi Mittal’s sponsorship of the ‘Pakistan Conference at Harvard 2025’ is not only tone-deaf, but it reflects a deep sense of betrayal by the Indian steel magnate towards the innocent Indian tourists who lost their lives in Pahalgam at the hands of Pakistan-trained terrorists.
Businessmen of Mittal’s stature do not operate in a vacuum. Once they step into the public sphere with their enormous wealth, influence, and global visibility, they cease to remain private individuals. They carry with them the prestige of India, the hopes of its people, and, of course, the responsibility to stand up for the national interest when it is most under threat.
The moral and patriotic duty of Indian Businessmen
At a time when the Indian government is undertaking comprehensive measures to diplomatically corner Pakistan—cutting trade ties, launching international campaigns to highlight Pakistan’s role in sponsoring terrorism, pushing for Financial Action Task Force (FATF) sanctions—Indian businessmen have a moral obligation to complement these efforts, not undermine them.
The reality is stark: Pakistan’s narrative survives on two legs—state-sponsored terror on the ground, and image rehabilitation abroad through academia, media, and diplomacy. By funding academic platforms that host Pakistani-centric conferences, Indian billionaires like Mittal inadvertently provide oxygen to Pakistan’s softer, “victimhood” portrayal, making it harder for India to expose its brutal realities before the world.
It is no longer acceptable for Indian elites to compartmentalize their patriotism. One cannot wave the tricolour at public events and quietly write cheques that fund platforms for a hostile nation. This is not business as usual. These are times of war—if not declared, then certainly waged by Pakistan in the form of asymmetric terror.
Supporting forums that promote Pakistani talking points is betrayal of Pahalgam victims
The stakes are not limited to sentiment. They are strategic. Every act of engagement with Pakistani academia, diplomacy, or business strengthens the very structures that deny and justify terrorism against India. Every platform given to Pakistani narratives chips away at India’s hard-fought efforts to present the truth globally.
Worse, it sends a demoralizing signal to the families of the dead: that the elite of India are too self-serving, too enamoured with their own global status, to care about the lives lost back home.
In a world increasingly shaped by narrative wars, silence is complicity. Financial support is endorsement. And lack of clarity is betrayal.
Indian business community must stand with the government
Lakshmi Mittal, and others of his influence, must take decisive action. First, by immediately withdrawing financial and institutional support to any event that legitimizes Pakistan’s narrative. Second, by issuing a strong, public condemnation of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Third, by aligning with India’s diplomatic efforts at international forums—not just through token words, but through tangible actions like funding think tanks, advocacy groups, and academic projects that expose Pakistan’s terror apparatus.
True patriotism demands sacrifice—sometimes of money, sometimes of reputation, but always of indifference and apathy.
The Indian business community must realize: this is not the age where you can afford to be apolitical. To stand with India today requires courage, clarity, and commitment. Anything less is an unforgivable abdication of duty.
The sponsorship of the Pakistan Conference at Harvard by an Indian-funded institute, particularly in the wake of the Pahalgam massacre, is a moral outrage. It must be condemned not just in angry tweets, but through collective action demanding accountability.
Lakshmi Mittal has a choice: to continue down the path of globalist detachment, or to stand tall with Bharat Mata, in her hour of grief and defiance.
History will not forget which side he chose.
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