Shashi Tharoor

About

Shashi Tharoor is an Indian politician and ex-diplomat serving under the banner of the Indian National Congress Party in the south Indian state of Kerala. He is known for his verbose social media presence, and for being a person of interest regarding the death of his wife, businesswoman Sunanda Pushkar, in the year 2014.

Biography

Career

Tharoor began his career as a staff member at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and spent 23 years as a career diplomat. He returned to India to contest the Lok Sabha state-level elections in Kerala under the banner of the Indian National Congress. He was appointed Union Minister of State in the Ministry of External Affairs in subsequent years— however, this post was shortlived, partly due to his "indiscreet use of the online microblogging service Twitter to send tweet messages about his personal life and professional career." ^[1]

Online History

Tharoor was the Indian politician with the largest Twitter following until 2013 when he was overtaken by Narendra Modi. ^[2] He has gained notoriety for his verbose manner of speaking both online and in real life, a habit he credits to an upbringing as a debate student. ^[3]

Sunanda Pushka Murder Investigation

Tharoor became a person of interest in the investigation into the 2014 murder of his wife Sunanda Pushkar. Her death came a few days after she took over Tharoor's Twitter page to expose a series of conversations between Tharoor and Mehr Tarar, a Pakistani journalist. The tweets were posted on January 15th, 2014, and have since been deleted but can be accessed via a news article by India Times (seen below).^[4]

Pushkar went on to make a statement to the Economic Times accusing Tarar of being an ISI (Pakistani Intelligence) agent.^[5] On January 17th, 2014, Pushkar was found dead in her hotel room. News18's official Twitter account posted news of the story on January 17th, gathering over 40 likes in eight years (seen below, left).^[6] Mehr Tarar also took to her Twitter to post a response, gathering over 200 likes in eight years (seen below, right).^[7]

Exasperating Farrago Of Distortions

On May 8th, 2017, Tharoor took to Twitter^[8] again to respond to continued allegations of his involvement in his wife's murder, saying "Exasperating farrago of distortions, misrepresentations&outright lies being broadcast by an unprincipled showman masquerading as a journalist." The post gathered over 9,000 likes in over four years (seen below).

The tweet became the subject of various memes due to Tharoor's long-standing reputation for having arcane and confusing words in his daily vocabulary. On May 8th, 2017, Twitter^[9] user @Sagarcasm posted a tweet joking about Tharoor's speech, gathering over 2,000 likes in over five years (seen below, left). Also on May 8th, Twitter^[10] user @c_aashish posted a graph of Google searches for the word "Farrago" after Tharoor's tweet, gathering nearly 400 likes in over five years (seen below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References