Shashi Tharoor is an Indian former international civil servant, diplomat, bureaucrat and politician, writer and public intellectual who has been serving as Member of Parliament for Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, since 2009. He is the Chairman of the Standing Committee on Chemicals and Fertilizers. He was formerly Under-Secretary General of the United Nations and unsuccessfully ran for the post of Secretary-General in 2006. Founder-Chairman of All India Professionals Congress, he formerly served as Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs and on Informational Technology.

Born in London, UK, and raised in India, Tharoor worked across the world, graduating 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 after finishing second in the 2006 selection for U.N. Secretary-General to Ban Ki-moon.

Early life and education

Shashi Tharoor was born on 10 March 1956 in London, United Kingdom to Chandran Tharoor and Sulekha Menon, a Malayali couple from Palakkad, Kerala. Tharoor has two younger sisters, Shobha and Smitha. Shashi's paternal grandfather's name was Chippukutty Nair. Shashi's paternal uncle was Parameshwaran Tharoor, the founder of Reader's Digest in India.

Tharoor's father, originally from Kerala, worked in various positions in London, Bombay, Calcutta and Delhi, including a 25-year career for The Statesman. Tharoor's parents returned to India when he was 2-years old, where he joined the Montfort School, Yercaud, in 1962, subsequently moving to Bombay and studying at the Campion School (1963–68).

In 1975, Tharoor graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from St Stephen's College, University of Delhi, where he had been president of the student union and also founded the St. Stephen's Quiz Club. Within the same year, Tharoor went to the United States to obtain an M.A. in International Relations at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University in Medford. After obtaining his M.A. in 1976, Tharoor further obtained his Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy in 1977 and his Ph.D. in International Relations and Affairs in 1978. While he was pursuing his doctorate, Tharoor was awarded the Robert B. Stewart Prize for best student and was also the first editor of the Fletcher Forum of International Affairs. At the age of 22, he was the youngest person to receive a doctorate in the history of the Fletcher School.

Diplomatic career

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, leading the organisation's rescue efforts at sea and succeeding 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.

Assistant Secretary and Under Secretary-General at the UN

In 1996, Tharoor was appointed Director of Communications and Special Projects and Executive Assistant to Secretary-General Kofi Annan. In January 2001, Tharoor was appointed as Interim Head of the Department of Public Information (DPI) at the Assistant-Secretary-General level. He was subsequently confirmed as the Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information (UNDPI) with effect from 1 June 2002. 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 organizing and conducting the first-ever UN seminar on Antisemitism, 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 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 Ki-moon'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, the city in which he would go on to win a record three 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, 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 99,989. 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. 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.
13th Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh with Shashi unveiling the commemoration plaque of the offsite Campus of Central University of Kerala at Thiruvananthapuram, in Kerala.
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. Some of his Twitter posts have proved controversial in the past and were highlighted negatively by the opposition and press.

Speeches

Tharoor is notable for his eloquence while speaking, as demonstrated by the popularity of his speeches on online platforms such as YouTube. For instance, Shashi Tharoor's Oxford Union speech, delivered at the Oxford Union in 2015, has amassed over 10 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 one million 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. He is an outspoken supporter of the Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, an organisation which campaigns for democratic reformation of the United Nations, arguing that “United Nations needs to open its doors to elected representatives” Many note that it is his combination of wit, charm, wry humour, and intelligence that make him accessible and held in high esteem, both in India and abroad.

Tharoor did a one-off stand-up act as part of Amazon Prime Video series One Mic Stand.

Honours and awards

1976 – Rajika Kripalani Young Journalist Award for the Best Indian Journalist under 30.
1990 – Federation of Indian Publishers' Hindustan Times Literary Award for the Best Book of the Year for The Great Indian Novel.
1991 – Commonwealth Writers' Prize for the Best Book of the Year in the Eurasian Region, for The Great Indian Novel
1998 – Excelsior Award for excellence in literature, Association of Indians in America (AIA)[citation needed] and the Network of Indian Professionals (NetIP).
1998 – Global Leader of Tomorrow, World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland
2004 – Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, India's highest honour for non-resident Indians (accepted 2007)
2009 – Zakir Hussain Memorial "Pride of India" Award.
2009 – Inspiration of the Year Award at GQ's Man of the Year Awards.
2009 – Hakim Khan Sur Award for National Integration, Maharana of Udaipur.
2010 – Sarva Deshiya Prathibha Award, Pazhassiraja Charitable Trust, Kozhikode.
2010 – "New Age Politician of the Year" Award, at NDTV's Indian of the Year awards.
2010 – Fifth IILM Distinguished Global Thinker Award, New Delhi.
2010 – Digital person of the year, Indian Digital Media Awards (IDMA), for popularising the digital medium in India.
2012 –  Spain : ESP Charles III Order COM.svg Commander of the Order of Charles III by King of Spain
2013 – First Sree Narayan Guru Global Secular and Peace Award at Thiruvananthapuram.
2013 – PETA's "Person of the Year".
2019 – Sahitya Akademi Award for his book, An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India.
2022 –  France : Legion Honneur Chevalier ribbon.svg Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur, for his writings and speeches