The Perennial Outlier

As Congress’s most erudite contrarian Shashi Tharoor courts controversy within his party once again, speculation mounts on will he stay, or will he cross the Rubicon?

Shashi Tharoor has never been one to retreat from an unpopular opinion or acknowledge. Speaking at the Raisina Dialogue yesterday, the Congress MP and author admitted to a misjudgment that left him with “egg on his face.” Tharoor, who criticized India’s stance on the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022, now conceded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s balancing act between Moscow and Kyiv was, in fact, a diplomatic coup. That confession lauding Modi, delivered with Tharoor’s characteristic eloquence, has predictably upset his own party while delighting the BJP.

The BJP’s Sambit Patra, never one to miss an opportunity for schadenfreude, called on Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge to acknowledge the wisdom of their own maverick MP.

Having only recently endured a furore over Tharoor’s unvarnished praise of the Left-led Kerala government’s industrial policy, the Congress seems resigned to his occasional rebellions.

Tharoor, for his part, has denied any intent to switch sides, citing “stark ideological differences” with the BJP. And yet, the murmurs persist. After all, Tharoor has spent years navigating Congress’s factional waters, his intellectual independence often putting him at odds with the party’s old guard. In 2022, he dared to challenge the party establishment by contesting the Congress presidency, facing off against Kharge who was the Gandhi family’s anointed choice. He lost, but the act itself was an assertion that he was not content to be a mere ornament in the Congress.

His history of friction with the party is long and storied. His “cattle class” remark in 2009, which was an acerbic response to a question about economy-class travel during the UPA’s austerity drive, had earned him a sharp rebuke. His stay at a five-star hotel, alongside then External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna had landed him in hot water with the government. In 2010, his role in securing a stake for his late wife, Sunanda Pushkar, in an IPL franchise forced his resignation as a junior minister. And in 2014, Pushkar’s sudden death in a Delhi hotel room threw him into a vortex of legal battles and personal tragedy, culminating in his 2021 acquittal in a murder case.

Yet, despite the controversies (or perhaps because of them) Tharoor has remained an electoral force. Since 2009, he has won four consecutive Lok Sabha elections from Thiruvananthapuram, defying critics who long dismissed him as an elite intellectual with little grassroots appeal. He commands a distinct support base of urbane, educated persons often disillusioned with the Congress’s traditional politics. His literary flourish, his Oxford-inflected baritone and his technocratic approach to governance set him apart in a party still steeped in dynastic and caste equations.

But being a perennial outlier has its costs. In Kerala, Tharoor’s recent remarks about the Congress’s lack of grassroots leadership rankled the state unit, which is already wary of his unpredictable streak. His praise of the Left’s industrial policy was seen as an unnecessary provocation, triggering suspicions about his long-term allegiance. That his latest comments lauding PM Modi on India’s foreign policy only adds to the intrigue.

Tharoor has insisted he is a Congress loyalist, describing himself as a “classic liberal” rather than an ideologue. But the lingering question is how long can a man of his intellectual autonomy and impatient of any party orthodoxy remain tethered to a party that seldom celebrates dissent?

Tharoor’s political career, like his prose, is complex, layered and full of contradictions. Whether he stays within the Congress to challenge its ossified structures or charts a new course altogether, one thing is certain: Shashi Tharoor will not fade into the background. He never has.