Brand Shashi Tharoor: Substance, spectacle and ‘Tharoorisms'
Shashi Tharoor stands out in Indian politics as a rare blend of statesman, scholar and showman, wielding words with unmatched flair across global and domestic stages.
ADVERTISEMENT
Few Indian politicians traverse as seamlessly between the austere chambers of the United Nations, the literary fervor of the Jaipur Literature Festival, the rhetorical intensity of the Lok Sabha and the rapid-fire discourse of social media as Shashi Tharoor. Over the years, Tharoor has come to embody a rare confluence of charisma, intellectual gravitas and a distinct public presence - a brand unto himself.
“Shashi Tharoor brings everything together under one compelling persona,” said Lloyd Mathias, investor & business strategist. “There’s his erudition, his cosmopolitan education and his grounding in literature and public affairs.” A product of Campion School and St. Stephen’s College in Delhi, followed by graduate studies at an elite public policy institution in the United States, Tharoor’s academic pedigree is not incidental to his appeal — it is foundational.
That intellectual framework was further honed during a distinguished two-decade-long career at the United Nations, where he rose to the post of Under-Secretary-General, one step below the Secretary-General. His literary output - more than 20 books spanning fiction, history, and commentary - and his political success, with four consecutive victories in Thiruvananthapuram, a constituency far removed from the power corridors of Delhi, position him as both a global thinker and a grounded political actor.
Yet, the persona that is “Brand Tharoor” is not without its paradoxes.
“He has two faces,” said Sandeep Goyal, chairman of the advertising firm Rediffusion. “On one hand, he is that rare intellectual in Indian politics. On the other, he is also a figure of occasional caricature - someone whose florid vocabulary often elicits more amusement than admiration.”
For all his Oxford Union-style finesse, Tharoor’s penchant for polysyllabic flourish - think “floccinaucinihilipilification” - often trends more for novelty than for nuance.
Still, for some, it is precisely this linguistic dexterity that defines his public persona.
“Brand Shashi Tharoor is a brand par excellence,” said Harish Bijoor, Brand Guru & Founder, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. “He brings a certain mastery of language to every forum - whether in books, essays or oratory. There is a deliberate elegance in his choice of words, and that sets him apart.”
In a media and political landscape often dominated by sound bites and simplification, Tharoor’s consistency of tone - articulate, literary, unyielding in its polish - serves as both his hallmark and his shield. “He is the master of the word,” Bijoor added. “The word played well, the word played with elan, the word played with charisma.”
So distinctive is his verbal style, Bijoor suggests, it may merit a category of its own: “I would call it a ‘Tharoorism.’ A worthy entry into the lexicon.”
Brand Tharoor, then, is both spectacle and substance, they concluded. Whether you view him as an intellectual statesman or an articulate outlier, there's little doubt that in the theatre of Indian politics, he’s in a league of his own.
