Shashi Tharoor

Shashi Tharoor
Shashi Tharooris an Indian politician and a former diplomat who is currently serving as Member of Parliament of India. He also currently serves as Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs...
NationalityIndian
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth9 March 1956
CountryIndia
terrorism preoccupation contact
Terrorism is a principal preoccupation in most of our international contacts.
country army winning
It's not the side of the bigger army that wins. It's the country that tells a better story.
running attitude acceptance
What economic libralisation needs, if it is to succeed , is a general acceptance that reforms are for the general good, that they might seem to help some more than others, but that in the long run everyone will benefit from them. Such attitude is far from being realized
together democracy bricks
Freedom of the press is the mortar that binds together the bricks of democracy -- and it is also the open window embedded in those bricks.
matter facts india
I make no bones about the fact that India matters to me, and I would like to matter to India.
writing views culture
In writing of Indian culture, I am highly conscious of my own subjectivity; arguably, there is more than one Indian culture, and certainly more than one view of Indian culture.
dream country bullying
Basically, there are two kinds of stereotypes out there in the world about America. There's America the Goliath - the big, powerful, bullying country that pushes its way around the world and gets its ways, pursues its own interests nakedly, irrespective of what others want. And the other stereotype is America, the land of opportunity, where everyone can go and do anything, be anything, make any dreams come true.
identity-politics fundamentals majesty
Hindu fundamentalism is a contradiction in terms, since Hinduism is a religion without fundamentals; there is no such thing as a Hindu heresy. How dare a bunch of goondas shrink the soaring majesty of the Vedas and the Upanishads to the petty bigotry of their brand of identity politics?
country mean worthwhile-things
Universality of the UN is a worthwhile thing in its own self because it means that every country belongs, feels it has a stake, and participates, rather than going away and finding other methods of conducting international relations.
country real trying
There's no longer a superpower standoff. But there are real problems that divide countries around the world. And the UN is still the place where we can get together and try and discuss them
country common-purpose government
This is the one international institution we have in which governments get together to work collectively for a common purpose. International crises, by definition, require international solutions. Peacekeeping is a response to conflict, is a response to situations in which often it is not the business of any one particular country to get into. It seems to me, therefore, that the world will for the foreseeable future need peacekeeping.
expression america long
No one says "Gee Whiz!" very much these days, of course, not even in America - both because that expression has long since been supplanted by others more colourful and less printable, and because our capacity for surprise has long since been dulled by a surfeit of sources.
elected favor grew members might parliament rare telephones wealthy
When I grew up in India, telephones were a rarity. In fact, they were so rare that elected members of Parliament had the right to allocate 15 telephone lines as a favor to those they deemed worthy. If you were lucky enough to be a wealthy businessman or an influential journalist, or a doctor or something, you might have a telephone.
air birthday boarding days few frequent handed home months parents plane rides school shy since sixth travel traveler willingly
I have been a frequent air traveler since I was a few months shy of my sixth birthday, when my parents packed me off to boarding school two plane rides away from home. Those days of being willingly handed from air hostess to air hostess as an 'unaccompanied minor' made me blase about the rigors of air travel.