Shashi Tharoor

Childhood and education

Tharoor was born in London to the Malayali family of Lily and Chandran Tharoor of Palakkad, Kerala. His father worked in various positions in London, Bombay, Calcutta and Delhi, including a 25-year career (culminating as group advertising manager) for The Statesman. His paternal uncle was Tharoor Parameshwar, the founder of Readers Digest in India. After his parents returned to India, Tharoor boarded at Montfort School, Yercaud, in 1962, subsequently moving to Bombay (now Mumbai) and studying at the Campion School (1963–68). He spent his high school years at St. Xavier's Collegiate School in Calcutta (1969–71). He graduated with a bachelor of arts (honours) degree in history from St Stephen's College, Delhi.

In 1975 he moved to the United States to pursue graduate studies at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where he obtained his MA and MALD and was awarded the Robert B. Stewart Prize for Best Student and completed his PhD at the age of 22. At Fletcher he also helped found and was the first editor of the Fletcher Forum of International Affairs.

He has also been awarded an honorary D.Litt by the University of Puget Sound and a doctorate honoris causa in history by the University of Bucharest.

Beginning

Tharoor's career in the United Nations began in 1978 as a staff member of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva. From 1981 until 1984 he was head of the UNHCR office in Singapore, during the boat people crisis, for which he led the organisation's rescue efforts at sea and succeeded in resettling a backlog of Vietnamese refugees. He also processed Polish and Acehnese refugee cases. After a further stint at the UNHCR headquarters in Geneva, during which he became the first chairman of the staff elected by UNHCR personnel worldwide, Tharoor left UNHCR. In 1989 he was appointed special assistant to the Under-Secretary General for Special Political Affairs, the unit that later became the Peacekeeping Operations Department in New York. Until 1996, he led the team responsible for peacekeeping operations in the former Yugoslavia, spending considerable time on the ground during the civil war there.

Under-Secretary-General at the UN

In 1996 Tharoor was appointed director of communications and special projects and executive assistant to the then Secretary-General Kofi Annan. In January 2001 he was appointed Under-Secretary General for Communications and Public Information, and as Head of the Department of Public Information (UNDPI). In this capacity, he was responsible for the United Nations' communications strategy, enhancing the image and effectiveness of the organisation. In 2003 the Secretary-General gave him the additional responsibility of United Nations Coordinator for Multilingualism. During his tenure at the UNDPI, Tharoor reformed the department and undertook a number of initiatives, ranging from organising and conducting the first-ever UN seminar on anti-Semitism, the first-ever UN seminar on Islamophobia after the 11 September attacks, and launching an annual list of "Ten Under-Reported Stories the World Ought to Know about", which was last produced in 2008 by his successor.

On 9 February 2007, Tharoor resigned from the post of UN Under-Secretary-General and left the UN on 1 April 2007.

Campaign for UN Secretary-General: 2006

In 2006, the government of India nominated Tharoor for the post of UN Secretary-General. Had he won, the 50-year-old Shashi Tharoor would have become the second-youngest Secretary-General, after the 46-year-old Dag Hammarskjöld. Although all previous Secretaries-General had come from small countries, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and National Security Advisor M. K. Narayanan felt that Tharoor's candidacy would demonstrate India's willingness to play a larger role at the United Nations.

Tharoor finished second, behind Ban Ki-moon of South Korea, in each of the four straw polls conducted by the UN Security Council. In the final round, Ban emerged as the only candidate not to be vetoed by one of the permanent members, while Tharoor received one veto from the United States. U.S. Ambassador John Bolton later revealed his instructions from Condoleezza Rice: "We don't want a strong Secretary-General." Tharoor was a protégé of the independently-minded Kofi Annan, and a senior American official told Tharoor that the US was determined to have "No more Kofis." After the vote, Tharoor withdrew his candidacy and declined Ban's invitation to remain in service beyond the expiry of his term as Under-Secretary-General.

Post-UN career

In February 2007, amidst speculation about his post-UN future, the Indian press reported that Tharoor might be inducted into Council of Ministers of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as Minister of State for External Affairs. In the same month, an American gossip blog reported that Tharoor was a finalist for the position of dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication in Los Angeles, but he withdrew his name from consideration at the final stage. Instead, Tharoor became chairman of Dubai-based Afras Ventures, which established the Afras Academy for Business Communication (AABC) in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India, the city in which he would go on to win two parliamentary elections. He also spoke around the world about India and Kerala, where he spent increasing amounts of time before moving for good to India in October 2008.

Prior to embarking on his political career, Shashi Tharoor also served on the board of overseers of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the board of trustees of the Aspen Institute, and the advisory boards of the Indo-American Arts Council, the American India Foundation, the World Policy Journal, the Virtue Foundation, and the human rights organisation Breakthrough. At the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1976, he founded and was the first chair of the editorial board of The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, a journal examining issues in international relations. Tharoor was an international adviser to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva from 2008 to 2011. He served on the advisory council of the Hague Institute for International Justice and was elected Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities during 1995–96. He also supported various educational causes, including as Patron of GEMS Modern Academy in Dubai.

Political career in India

Tharoor once said that when he began his political career he was approached by the Congress, the Communists, and the BJP. He chose Congress because he felt ideologically comfortable with it. In March 2009 Tharoor contested the Indian General Elections as a candidate for the Congress Party in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. His opponents included P. Ramachandran Nair of the Communist Party of India (CPI), Neelalohitadasan Nadar of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), MP Gangadharan of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), and PK Krishna Das of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Despite criticism that he was an "elite outsider", Tharoor won the elections by a margin of about 100,000. He was then selected as a minister of state in the Council of Ministers of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. On 28 May 2009 he was sworn in as Minister of State for External Affairs, in charge of Africa, Latin America, and the Gulf, including the Haj pilgrimage, and the Consular, Passports and Visas services of the Ministry.

Tharoor was a pioneer in using social media as an instrument of political interaction. He was India's most-followed politician on Twitter until 2013, when he was overtaken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

However, some of his Twitter posts proved controversial and were highlighted negatively by the opposition and press. As Minister of State for External Affairs he re-established long-dormant diplomatic relationships with African nations, where his fluency in French made him popular with Francophone countries and their heads of state.

He was also the first Indian minister to visit Haiti after the devastating 2010 earthquake. He reformed the arrangements relating to the conduct of the Haj pilgrimage. He initiated new policy-planning activities on the Indian Ocean and represented India at various global events during his 11-month tenure as minister. In April 2010, he resigned from the position, following allegations that he had misused his office to get shares in the IPL cricket franchise. Tharoor denied the charges and, during his resignation speech in Parliament, called for a full inquiry. In a 2014 rejoinder he defended his position: "I was never involved in a scam of any sort in the IPL- I was brought down because...[I had] antagonised some powerful political cricketing interests" and added that he had "cooperated extensively with the detailed investigation conducted by the Enforcement Directorate into the entire issue", and no wrongdoing had been found.

Between 2010 and 2012 Tharoor remained active in Parliament and was member-convenor of the Parliamentary Forum on Disaster Management, a member of the Standing Committee on External Affairs, of the Consultative Committee of Defence, the Public Accounts Committee, and the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Telecoms. He participated in several important debates of the 15th Lok Sabha, including on the Lokpal Bill, the demand for grants of the Ministry of External Affairs and of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, the black money debate, and so on. In the special debate on the 60th anniversary of the Indian Parliament, Tharoor was one of four members of the Congress Party, including party President Sonia Gandhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and Leader of the House Pranab Mukherjee, to be invited to address the Lok Sabha.

In 2012 Tharoor was re-inducted into the Union Council of Ministers by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with the portfolio of minister of state for HRD. In this role he took special interest in the problems and challenges of adult education, distance education and enhancing high-quality research by academic institutions. He was responsible for the ministry's written answers to Parliament's questions and responded to oral questions on education during the Lok Sabha's Question Hour. He addressed forums and conferences on education, explained a vision of India's educational challenges in the context of the country's demographic opportunities, and stressed that education was not only a socioeconomic issue, but also a national security issue.

As Member of Parliament for Thiruvananthapuram, Tharoor became the first elected representative in India to issue annual reports on his work as MP, including furnishing accounts of his MPLADS expenditure. In 2012 he published a half-term report followed in 2014 by a full-term report.

In May 2014 Tharoor won his re-election from Thiruvananthapuram, defeating O. Rajagopal of the Bharatiya Janata Party by a margin of around 15,700 votes, and became a member of the 15th Lok Sabha, sitting in Opposition. He was named Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs. Shashi Tharoor was dropped from the post of congress spokesperson on 13 October 2014 after he praised statements of his party's opponent, Prime Minister Modi.

In regards to Tharoor's removal from the post of congress spokesperson, The Telegraph (Calcutta) opined, “For an Opposition MP to have and to exercise the freedom to appreciate a good thing done by the government and for a ruling party MP to speak and vote against the party line is not just legitimate parliamentary practice, it is the very essence of parliamentary democracy. Shashi Tharoor, from the ranks of the Congress has tried to do that; there is not one BJP MP who has matched him. Blind conformism is not loyalty, nor independent thinking, dissent.”

After the BJP victory of 2014, Tharoor was asked to help the treasury benches draft a statement condemning Pakistan for freeing Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the Lashkar-e-Toiba commander, who masterminded the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people. In January 2015, Tharoor asked not to debunk genuine accomplishments of Ancient Indian Science due to exaggerations of the Hindutva brigade, amid 2015 Indian Science Congress ancient aircraft controversy.

Speeches

Tharoor is especially notable for his extraordinary eloquence while speaking, as demonstrated by the immense popularity of his speeches on online platforms such as YouTube. For instance, his speech decrying British Colonialism, delivered at the Oxford Union in 2015 has amassed over 3.9 million views on one site alone, while simultaneously being praised as ground-breaking in various educational institutions in India. Further speeches such as those explaining the importance of "soft power" and analyzing the impacts of education in India have garnered over 1,000,000 and two million views respectively.

Additionally, Tharoor is known for his views on a number of topics including economics, history, governance, and geopolitics due to both his well-regarded educational attainment and his broad experience while at the United Nations. Many note that it is his combination of wit, charm, wry humor, and intelligence that make him accessible and held in high esteem, both in India and abroad.

Controversies

Literary career

Tharoor has written numerous books in English.

Tharoor has been a columnist in each of India's three best-known English-language newspapers, most recently for The Hindu newspaper (2001–2008) and in a weekly column, "Shashi on Sunday," in the Times of India (January 2007 – December 2008). Following his resignation as Minister of State for External Affairs, he began a fortnightly column on foreign policy issues in the Deccan Chronicle. Previously he was a columnist for the Gentleman magazine and the Indian Express newspaper, as well as a frequent contributor to Newsweek International and the International Herald Tribune. His op-eds and book reviews have appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, amongst other papers. His monthly column, "India Reawakening", distributed by Project Syndicate, appears in 80 newspapers around the world.

Tharoor began writing at the age of 6, and his first published story appeared in the Sunday edition of The Free Press Journal, in Mumbai at age 10. His World War II adventure novel Operation Bellows, inspired by the Biggles books, was serialised in the Junior Statesman starting a week before his 11th birthday. Each of his books has been a bestseller in India. The Great Indian Novel is in its 42nd edition, and a Silver Jubilee special edition was issued on the book's 25th anniversary, September 2014, from Viking Pengun India.The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone has undergone seven hardback re-printings there.President Bill Clinton cited Shashi Tharoor's book India From Midnight to the Millennium in his speech to the Indian parliament in 2000.

Tharoor has lectured widely on India, and is often quoted for his observations, including, "India is not, as people keep calling it, an underdeveloped country, but rather, in the context of its history and cultural heritage, a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay." He also coined a comparison of India's "thali" to the American "melting pot": "If America is a melting pot, then to me India is a thali – a selection of sumptuous dishes in different bowls. Each tastes different, and does not necessarily mix with the next, but they belong together on the same plate, and they complement each other in making the meal a satisfying repast".

Shashi Tharoor's non-fiction work "An Era Of Darkness", published in the UK as "Inglorious Empire" What the British Did to India", arising out of a speech he delivered at the Oxford Union, was published in November 2016.It sold over 50,000 copies in eight hardback reprints within six months of publication. The UK edition rose to Number 1 in the London Evening Standard bestseller lists.

Victor Mallet in Financial Times said Tharoor "wants us to understand the origins of the difficulties that confronted India after 1947", attributing most of that to colonialism. The New Statesman said it is an important read as talks of Empire 2:0 is coming up post-Brexit.

Personal life

Tharoor's first wife was Tilottama Mukherji, a granddaughter of Kailashnath Katju and thus a first cousin of Markandey Katju. She is now a professor of humanities at New York University. They have two sons, Kanishk and Ishaan. Ishaan is a former senior editor at Time magazine, and now writes on foreign affairs for The Washington Post. Kanishk is a former editor at Open Democracy, and is the author of the highly praised short story collection Swimmer Among The Stars and he is working on a novel in New York. Kanishk also served as associate editor at openDemocracy.net 2006-09. Later Tharoor married Christa Giles, a Canadian diplomat working at the United Nations.

After their divorce, Tharoor married Sunanda Pushkar in his ancestral home in Elavanchery village in Kerala's Palakkad district in August 2010. On 17 January 2014, Sunanda, aged 50, died at The Leela Hotel in Chanakyapuri, New Delhi.

He is a vegetarian and Tharoor "abhors the idea of consuming the corpses of animals," although he does not have a problem with those who do. He has stated that he is "very proud of being a Hindu" and that he's a "worshipping" and "believing Hindu." Tharoor also claims to have read a "fair amount" of the Upanishads.

Honours, awards and international recognition