S. Jaishankar

Early Life and Education

Subrahmanyam Jaishankar was born in New Delhi on 9 January 1955 into a Tamil family, the son of the Indian strategic affairs analyst K. Subrahmanyam. He went to school in Delhi and Bengaluru, graduated from St. Stephen's College, University of Delhi, and earned an MA in political science and an M.Phil. and PhD in international relations, specialising in nuclear diplomacy, at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Diplomatic Career

Jaishankar joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1977 and served as third and then second secretary at the embassy in the Soviet Union from 1979 to 1981; he later served in the missions in Colombo, Budapest and Tokyo, in the Ministry of External Affairs and in the President's Secretariat, meeting his future wife, Kyoko Somekawa, while posted in Japan. He was ambassador to the Czech Republic (2000–2004) and high commissioner to Singapore (2007–2009), and took part in the negotiation of the India–United States civil nuclear agreement.

From 2009 to 2013 he was India's ambassador to China. In May 2013, according to reports, he helped negotiate the end of a standoff caused by Chinese troops encamping on the Depsang Plains in Ladakh; he advocated deeper cooperation with China provided India's "core interests" were respected, and pressed for better market access for Indian businesses in China. He was ambassador to the United States from 2013 to 2015. On 29 January 2015 he was appointed Foreign Secretary — the most senior civil-service post in India's foreign ministry — with his tenure extended by a year to 2018; he held the post during the 2017 China–India standoff at Doklam. After retiring he briefly served as President – Global Corporate Affairs at Tata Sons.

External Affairs Minister

On 30 May 2019 Jaishankar became External Affairs Minister as a cabinet minister — the first former Foreign Secretary to head the ministry — and that year became a member of the Rajya Sabha (upper house) for Gujarat; he was also awarded the Padma Shri, India's fourth-highest civilian honour, in 2019. In June 2024 he was reappointed External Affairs Minister in Narendra Modi's third government.

After the China–India clash in the Galwan Valley in 2020, he met Chinese State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Moscow on 10 September that year, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation foreign ministers' meeting; the two sides issued a joint press statement setting out a five-point consensus, including that the current situation in the border areas was not in the interest of either side and that border troops should continue their dialogue and quickly disengage. In October 2024, speaking at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, he said the overall relationship with China had "not been great" over the previous few years because China had reneged on agreements on keeping the border stable. He is the author of The India Way: Strategies for an Uncertain World (2020) and Why Bharat Matters (2024).