Shashi Tharoor’s uneasy relationship with the Congress is once again in the spotlight, and this time the tension appears to be approaching a decisive moment. The four-time Thiruvananthapuram MP has missed two back-to-back strategy meetings of the party’s top leadership at a time when the Congress was preparing for the Winter Session of Parliament, and Kerala is only months away from its Assembly polls. His absence from Sonia Gandhi’s meeting, attended by virtually every senior leader from Mallikarjun Kharge to Rahul Gandhi, has sharpened speculation about the drift between him and the leadership. While Tharoor insists that he skipped the meeting only because he was with his elderly mother in Kerala and had duly informed the high command, the pattern is difficult to ignore. Days earlier, he had also stayed away from a crucial November 18 meeting on the SIR issue, citing ill health, even though he attended a lecture by Prime Minister Narendra Modi the previous evening. His admiration for the Prime Minister’s address—one laced with criticism of the Congress—was noted by many within the party, who viewed it as yet another instance of Tharoor positioning himself at a subtle distance from the Congress line. The timing of these developments adds further complexity: if Tharoor intends to part ways with the party he has represented for more than a decade and a half, it is logical that he would do so before the Kerala elections, where political space is fluid and deeply faction-driven. His every gesture now acquires disproportionate political meaning, feeding a narrative of mistrust that the Congress leadership seems reluctant, even unable, to publicly dispel.
It is no secret that Tharoor has often chafed against Congress orthodoxy and the party’s entrenched power structures. He was part of the G-23 group that wrote to Sonia Gandhi in 2020, demanding sweeping reforms in transparency, internal elections and communication. His subsequent decision to contest against Kharge for the Congress presidency in 2022 signalled a willingness to challenge the high command narrative from within—a challenge that was ultimately unsuccessful but symbolically powerful. Yet the real deterioration in his relationship with the leadership seems to have unfolded over the past year. After the Pahalgam terror attack and India’s Operation Sindoor, Tharoor emerged as one of the clearest voices articulating New Delhi’s position in international forums and the media. His measured articulation of India’s stance earned him praise across the political spectrum, but also created discomfort among Congress colleagues who felt he was straying too far from the party’s evolving criticism of the government’s handling of the crisis. The frictions sharpened further when the Centre selected Tharoor to head an Indian delegation for a diplomatic outreach exercise despite his party not recommending him for the role. For Congress loyalists wary of a central government attempting to appropriate Opposition figures for symbolic legitimacy, this was yet another signal that Tharoor’s political trajectory was slipping beyond the party’s control. The leadership’s irritation has been barely concealed. Kharge’s pointed remark—“the Congress believes in country first, but for some people, it’s Modi first”—was widely interpreted as a thinly veiled rebuke to Tharoor, emblematic of the growing sentiment among senior leaders that the Thiruvananthapuram MP’s public messaging increasingly aligns him closer to the government than to the Opposition bench.
What makes the current moment particularly consequential is the political context in Kerala and the Congress’s national positioning. Kerala’s Assembly elections, scheduled for early next year, will be fought in a crowded field dominated by the Left, the Congress-led UDF and a growing array of smaller parties hoping to exploit factional cracks. Tharoor remains one of the Congress’s most recognisable national faces from the state, and any ambiguity about his political future weakens the party at a time when clarity and cohesion are vital. Moreover, Tharoor’s absences are not happening in a vacuum; they come after repeated instances where he has publicly diverged from the party narrative—from foreign policy matters to his calibrated praise of the Prime Minister. The Congress, already struggling to project unity and ideological clarity on the national stage, now faces the uncomfortable prospect of one of its most articulate MPs signalling impatience with the party’s internal culture. The leadership, for its part, appears unwilling to either openly reprimand him or meaningfully re-engage with him, resulting in a limbo that only deepens speculation. For a party confronting the pressures of a resurgent BJP nationally and a resurgent Left in Kerala, the uncertainty surrounding Tharoor is more than a personality-driven drama—it is a symptom of the Congress’s unresolved debates about dissent, leadership, ideological flexibility and the scope for independent voices. Whether Tharoor stays or leaves may ultimately matter less than what his trajectory reveals about a party still struggling to define its future. But the Congress must recognise that ambiguity carries its own political cost—and that the longer this unease festers, the more it risks weakening the party at a moment when clarity, coherence and confidence are its most urgently needed assets.