Shashi Tharoor

Shashi Tharoor
Shashi Tharoor
	Tharoor in 2025
Chairman of Standing Committee on External Affairs
	Incumbent
	Assumed office ; 26 September 2024
Appointed by	Om Birla
Preceded by	P. P. Chaudhary
Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha
	Incumbent
	Assumed office ; 31 May 2009
Preceded by	Pannyan Raveendran
Constituency	Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala
Prime Minister	In office; 28 October 2012 – 26 May 2014
Prior offices
Union Minister of State for Human Resource Development
	In office; 28 October 2012 – 26 May 2014
Prime Minister	Manmohan Singh
Minister	Kapil Sibal; M. M. Pallam Raju
Preceded by	Daggubati Purandeswari
Succeeded by	Upendra Kushwaha
Union Minister of State for External Affairs
	In office; 28 May 2009 – 18 April 2010
Prime Minister	Manmohan Singh
Minister	S. M. Krishna
Preceded by	Anand Sharma
Succeeded by	E. Ahamed
United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information
	In office; 1 June 2002 – 9 February 2007
Secretary-General	Kofi Annan
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Kiyotaka Akasaka
Chairman of Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology
	In office; 13 September 2019 – 12 September 2022
Appointed by	Om Birla
Preceded by	Anurag Thakur
Succeeded by	Nishikant Dubey
Chairman of Standing Committee on Chemicals & Fertilizers
	In office; 13 September 2022 – 12 September 2024
Appointed by	Om Birla
Preceded by	Kanimozhi Karunanidhi
Succeeded by	Kirti Azad
Chairman of the All India Professionals Congress
	In office; 1 August 2017 – 15 November 2023
AICC President	Sonia Gandhi; Rahul Gandhi; Mallikarjun Kharge
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Praveen Chakravarty
Personal details
Born	Shashi Krishnan Chandrashekhan Tharoor; 9 March 1956; London, England
Party	Indian National Congress (since 2009)
Spouses	Tilottama Mukherji (m. 1981, divorced); Christa Giles (m. 2007; div. 2010); Sunanda Pushkar (m. 2010; died 2014);
Children	2 (including Ishaan)
Alma mater	Delhi University (BA); Tufts University (MA, MALD, PhD);
Occupation	Writer; orator; public intellectual; former diplomat; bureaucrat; statesman;
Awards	Full list
Website	shashitharoor.in
	Writing career
Period	Postmodern
Genre	Novel; short story; non-fiction;
Subject	Economics; history; governance; foreign policy; geopolitics;
Years active	1964–present
Notable works	The Great Indian Novel; India: From Midnight to the Millennium; Why I Am a Hindu; Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India;

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Shashi Tharoor (Malayalam pronunciation: [ʃɐʃi t̪ɐɾuːr]; born 9 March 1956) is an Indian politician, author, public intellectual and diplomat. A member of the Indian National Congress, he has represented Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, in the Lok Sabha since 2009. He was formerly an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and ran for the office of Secretary-General in 2006, coming second.

Born in London and raised in Bombay and Calcutta, Tharoor graduated from St. Stephen's College, Delhi, in 1975 and culminated his studies in 1978 with a doctorate in international relations and affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. At the age of 22, he was the youngest person at the time to receive such an honour from the Fletcher School. From 1978 to 2007, Tharoor was a career official at the United Nations, rising to the rank of Under-Secretary General for Communications and Public Information in 2001. He announced his retirement from the organisation after finishing second in the 2006 selection for Secretary-General to Ban Ki-moon.

In 2009, Tharoor began his political career by joining the Indian National Congress (INC). He became a member of Parliament that year by winning the Lok Sabha seat of Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala; he has been re-elected in 2014, 2019, and 2024. During the Manmohan Singh government, Tharoor served as the minister of state for external affairs. He founded the All India Professionals Congress. Tharoor formerly served as the chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology.

A Sahitya Akademi Award winner, Tharoor has authored many works of fiction and non-fiction since 1981. Tharoor is popular for his command over the English language. He was the most followed Indian on Twitter before being overtaken by Narendra Modi in 2014.