It is pronounced as तरूर not थरूर

The entire Shashi Tharoor controversy has me gasping every time a reporter calls his name as Thharoor or थरूर i.e. the aspirated sound. I am quite exasperated. This is a classic north vs south pronunciation battle. There is no word in the English language (leave out the French ones) where T is pronounced as त. T is always pronounced as ट or ठ. Actually closer to the latter. Hence most South Indians (given a better grounding in English than their cowbelt colleagues) whose name consists of the soft त sound, add an 'h' to the 't' to indicate the softness of sound. This is construed north of Vindhyas as the aspirated version and mispronounced. Hence you will have South Indian bank clerks making a draft for 'Maruthi India Limited' and surprise surprise. It is actually cleared by the clearing banks too.

So gentlemen and ladies, next time you see a 'th' in a south Indian name, take my recommendation, go with त instead of थ. It is possible that in some rare instance the correct sound might actually be the latter, but it will not sound as jarring as using थ where  त is required.

Update : While the correct Malayalam pronunciation of Tharoor is तरूर, Shashi Tharoor has indicated his preference for the "th" sound in the english word "thing". So the correct pronunciation of his name would be "tharoor". θʌru:r