Shashi Tharoor: Suitors aplenty but no great options

His interview blitzkrieg wasn’t limited to international media outlets—he was hot property even on India’s national channels, making a case as much for the Narendra Modi government as he was for the country. In the process, however, Tharoor set off alarm bells ringing within the Congress, increasingly at the end of its tether.

At odds with the Congress

In fact, Tharoor’s latest transgression is deemed one too many within Congress circles, with a clear pattern emerging to it. While Tharoor’s individual stock has only gone up whenever he’s crossed the party line, the Congress has often been left to bear the brunt of it. True, it could partly be on account of the lack of political guile of Rahul Gandhi and his advisors, but the trust deficit between Tharoor and the leadership is getting harder to bridge.

There is a line of thought among Congress leaders that Tharoor is burnishing his own reputation and popularity at the cost of his party, especially Rahul Gandhi—whether by happenstance or design. For instance, when Modi sought to mock Gandhi in the Parliament by stating that certain opposition leaders speak on foreign policy to come across as ‘mature’, he contrasted Tharoor with the Leader of Opposition. Again, when Modi was in Kerala to commission the Vizhinjam Port, he once again took Tharoor’s name to take an oblique dig at Gandhi.

It did not go unnoticed that the first instance of Tharoor flouting the party line in recent times followed the PM’s special mention: Tharoor was all praise for Modi’s fruitless visit to the US soon after Donald Trump’s swearing-in as president. Tharoor even gave Modi the benefit of doubt when it came to the handcuffing of illegal immigrants deported back to India from the US, making an assumption that the PM would have taken the issue up with the Americans.

Tharoor as a free agent

From that point on, Tharoor has been writing and speaking less as a Congress leader, and more as a free agent, as he used to, before dabbling in politics. His column in The New Indian Express paying a back-handed compliment to the Left in Kerala for its belated change of policy towards private capital blew up around the same time.

That controversy culminated in a one-on-one meeting with Rahul Gandhi, at Tharoor’s insistence, where he wasn’t given any assurances or clarity with regard to a role either in Kerala, or in the party structure. A disgruntled Tharoor has since been taking positions independent of the party.

At the Raisina Conclave in March, Tharoor admitted to getting India’s straddling of Russia and Ukraine wrong (following Trump’s second-coming), making common cause with the government.

A planted story

Nevertheless, Congress leaders bending over backwards to ingratiate themselves to Rahul Gandhi haven’t done any favours to themselves by employing dishonourable means to get back at Tharoor. Take, for example, Congress general secretary in-charge (Communications) Jairam Ramesh planting a story in the media on Tharoor getting censured at the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting on 14 May—for apparently crossing the party’s ‘Lakshman Rekha’.

The fact is that CWC members who made comments about leaders taking positions at odds with Congress—such as Randeep Singh Surjewala, Jitendra Singh and Ramesh himself—did not take Tharoor’s name at all in the meeting. At the press briefing that followed the CWC, Ramesh stated on record that Tharoor’s views did not reflect the position of the party. Later, he passed on informally to the media that Tharoor was pulled up by the leadership.

This naturally led to screaming headlines in Kerala as well as nationally, forcing Tharoor to issue a detailed statement to negate the ‘plant’. According to Congress insiders, Ramesh is busy currying favour with Gandhi, with the latter considering appointing someone from his inner coterie to head the communications wing.

BJP outwits the Congress

Conversely, Tharoor going overboard with his defence of the PM, even if couched in national security jargon, gave the government an opening to embarrass the Congress further. This also came handy for the ruling establishment to deflect pertinent questions left unanswered in the wake of the Pahalgam massacre.

Having been sounded out by the government to head a parliamentary delegation abroad, Tharoor relayed it to the Congress leadership—only for Rahul Gandhi to cry foul at being sidestepped. It was in this context that the Congress tried to strike out Tharoor’s name from the list when Parliamentary Affairs minister Kiren Rijiju got in touch with the party.

The petty-minded Congress leaders who advised Rahul Gandhi into it, however, couldn’t anticipate BJP’s larger game plan of driving a wedge within the party in the process. Manish Tewari’s brazen response to his name figuring on the list left the Congress even further on the back foot.

Parliamentarian in the wrong era

There is a growing speculation in Kerala that Tharoor is on his way out of the Congress, coveting a position in the Union government. Sources close to Tharoor, however, flatly deny it—although it is possible that the Thiruvananthapuram MP would continue to chart an independent course without leaving the party. The question is how long the Congress can afford it, as in 2026 Kerala will have an assembly election—one that the party cannot afford to lose.

Tharoor’s writing over the decades indicates how he longs for an era where politicians rise above party lines and have robust personal equations regardless of political differences. The trouble with Tharoor’s yearning is that the era of bipartisanship is all but over in the Modi era—post 2014. Whereas Tharoor is still dreaming of a bygone era, a reality check might be in order to discern that Modi is no Vajpayee and that political brinkmanship cannot maketh a statesman.