Shashi Tharoor

Shashi Tharoor (; born 9 March 1956) is an Indian politician, public intellectual, former diplomat, and bureaucrat. A member of the Indian National Congress, he has represented Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, in the Lok Sabha since 2009. He currently serves as the chairman of the Committee on External Affairs. He was formerly an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and ran for for the office of Secretary-General in 2006, coming second.

Born in London and raised in Mumbai and Kolkata, 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. A non-loyalist of the Gandhi family, he was defeated by Mallikarjun Kharge in his bid to become party president in 2022. He founded the All India Professionals Congress and is currently a member of the Congress Working Committee, which is the highest decision-making body of the INC. 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. Provided by Wikipedia