Do we like Shashi Tharoor?
Our score: 8 out of 10. He took on a hostile Parliament to push for decriminalising gay sex, and nothing harmful turned up, though the record on other topics is thin and a defamation case is unresolved.
Tharoor was born in London and spent nearly three decades at the United Nations. He joined in 1978 with the refugee agency in Geneva, worked beside Kofi Annan, and was confirmed in 2002 as Under-Secretary-General for communications. He later went into Indian politics and is now a Congress MP for Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala.
On the harm test he is on the right side of the page's biggest question. In 2015 he put up a private member's bill to decriminalise consensual sex between adults, and he said BJP members opposed it at the very first stage. After the Supreme Court decriminalised gay sex in 2018 he called it a “dawn of freedom”. I found nothing on women, migrants or the climate that raised a flag, but that part of the record is thin.
The recent news fits the same pattern. In August 2026 he asked the government about the committee set up after the Supreme Court's same-sex couples ruling. The reply said it had met twice and produced no report, and he wrote that “Advisories do not create rights.” Separately, in April 2026 The Quint found that a viral clip of him supposedly comparing India's and Pakistan's diplomacy was AI-manipulated audio, not something he said.
His long-running stoush is with Congress itself. He has drawn criticism from his own party for praising Modi since 2014. In 2025 he led an all-party delegation abroad over Operation Sindoor, and said of it: “We are not here on a party political mission.” Where you land depends on whether you see that as principled independence or as a man who keeps embarrassing his team.
There are a few legal and electoral marks. A BJP leader filed a criminal defamation complaint over his 2018 'scorpion' remark about Modi, which Tharoor was quoting from another source. In August 2025 the Supreme Court bench asked why the complainant was being so touchy, and the matter was adjourned. In 2024 an election officer issued him a strict warning over remarks seen as aimed at a rival, which he denied.
On the good side, he won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2020 for his book An Era of Darkness. PRS Legislative Research's tracker shows he has taken part in 36 debates and asked 138 questions in this Lok Sabha, and moved six private member's bills. That is a hardworking MP rather than a ceremonial one.