Shashi Tharoor (born 9 March 1956) is an Indian politician, writer and former international diplomat. He worked at the United Nations for nearly three decades, rising to Under-Secretary-General, and came second in the 2006 election for UN Secretary-General. Since 2009 he has been a Congress Member of Parliament for Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala. He is also the author of more than twenty books and is famous in India for his oratory and his love of unusual English words.
Quick Facts
| Full name | Shashi Tharoor |
| Born | 9 March 1956, London, England |
| Age | 70 |
| Party | Indian National Congress |
| Constituency | Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala (Lok Sabha, since 2009) |
| Earlier posts | UN Under-Secretary-General (2002–2007); Minister of State for External Affairs (2009–2010) and Human Resource Development (2012–2014) |
| Education | St. Stephen’s College, Delhi; Fletcher School, Tufts University (Ph.D. 1978) |
| Children | 2 (Ishaan and Kanishk) |
| Honour | Sahitya Akademi Award (2019) |
Early Life and Education
Tharoor was born in London to Malayali parents from Kerala; his father, Chandran Tharoor, worked for The Statesman newspaper. The family returned to India when he was a child, and he grew up in Bombay and Calcutta. He studied history at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, where he was president of the students’ union, and then went to the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in the United States. He completed his Ph.D. there in 1978 at the age of 22.
United Nations Career (1978–2007)
Tharoor joined the UN refugee agency in Geneva in 1978 and headed its office in Singapore during the Vietnamese “boat people” crisis. He later worked on peacekeeping in the former Yugoslavia, served as a senior adviser to Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and became Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information. In 2006 India nominated him for the post of UN Secretary-General; he finished second to Ban Ki-moon of South Korea and left the UN in 2007.
Political Career
Tharoor joined the Congress party and won the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha seat in 2009. He has been re-elected three times, in 2014, 2019 and 2024.
In Manmohan Singh‘s government he was Minister of State for External Affairs (2009–2010), resigning over a controversy linked to an IPL cricket franchise, and later Minister of State for Human Resource Development (2012–2014). He has chaired parliamentary committees on external affairs and on information technology.
In October 2022 Tharoor contested the election for Congress president and lost to Mallikarjun Kharge. In 2025 he led one of the all-party delegations sent abroad by the government to explain India’s position after Operation Sindoor.
Writer
Tharoor has written fiction and non-fiction since his twenties. His satirical novel The Great Indian Novel (1989) retells the Mahabharata as the story of modern India. His 2015 speech at the Oxford Union arguing that Britain owed reparations to India was watched by millions and led to the book An Era of Darkness (2016), which won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2019.
Personal Life
Tharoor has twin sons, Ishaan and Kanishk, both writers and journalists, from his first marriage to Tilottama Mukherji. His third wife, Sunanda Pushkar, whom he married in 2010, was found dead in a Delhi hotel in January 2014. Tharoor was charged in connection with her death, and a Delhi court discharged him of all charges in 2021.
Selected Books
Frequently Asked Questions
When and where was Shashi Tharoor born?
Shashi Tharoor was born on 9 March 1956 in London, England and is 70 years old.
Featured image: Shashi Tharoor speaks at the Chatham House London Conference, 2 June 2015. Photo by Chatham House, licensed under CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
