Subrahmanyam Jaishankar (born 9 January 1955) is an Indian diplomat and politician serving as the Minister of External Affairs of the Government of India since 30 May 2019.He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party and a Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha since 5 July 2019. He previously served as the Foreign Secretary from January 2015 to January 2018. He became the second ever diplomat to be appointed as India's External Affairs minister, after Natwar Singh.

Early life and education

Jaishankar was born in Delhi, India to a prominent Indian civil servant and strategic affairs analyst, K. Subrahmanyam and Sulochana Subrahmanyam. He was brought up in a Hindu Tamil family. He has two brothers: the historian Sanjay Subrahmanyam and the IAS officer S. Vijay Kumar, former Rural Development Secretary of India.

Jaishankar did schooling from the Air Force School, Subroto Park, New Delhi, and from the Bangalore Military School, Bangalore, Karnataka, and is a graduate in chemistry from St. Stephen's College at the University of Delhi. He has an MA in political science and an M.Phil. and PhD in international relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), where he specialised in nuclear diplomacy.

Political career

On 31 May 2019, he was appointed to the Office of Minister of External Affairs. Jaishankar was sworn in as Cabinet minister on 30 May 2019.

On 5 July 2019, he was elected as Member of Parliament from Bharatiya Janata Party to the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat state. He succeeded late Sushma Swaraj who was the External Affairs Minister in Narendra Modi's Government in his first stint. In October 2020, Jaishankar and the Indian Minister of Defence, Rajnath Singh met with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and US Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper to sign the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement on Geospatial Cooperation (BECA), which facilitates the sharing of sensitive information and intelligence—including access to highly-accurate nautical, aeronautical, topographical, and geospatial data—between United States and India. The agreement had been under discussion for over a decade, but previous concerns over information security impelled the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition government to block it. In response to the dialogue, Chinese spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Wang Wenbin criticised the move and advised Pompeo to “abandon his Cold War mentality, zero-sum mindset, and stop harping on the 'China threat.'”

In November 2022, during a joint press conference along with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, Jaishankar praised Russia as "exceptionally steady" and "time-tested" partner of India and advocated a return to dialogue and peace between Russia and Ukraine. On June 2023, the Associated Press (AP) reported that Jaishankar had announced that India will remain committed in its stance on not inviting Ukraine to the 2023 G20 summit that is to be held in New Delhi, India.

Personal life

Jaishankar was married to his first wife Shobha till she succumbed to cancer. The two had met while studying at JNU. Later, he married Kyoko, who is of Japanese origin and has two sons, Dhruva and Arjun, and a daughter, Medha. He speaks Russian, English, Tamil, Hindi, conversational Japanese, Chinese and some Hungarian.

Honours

The Government of India honoured Padma Shri, fourth highest civilian award in 2019 for his contributions to Indian diplomacy and leading role in restructuring India's global conversations.