Tunku Varadarajan is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution

Tunku Varadarajan

Biography: 

Tunku Varadarajan was the Hoover Institution's institutional editor and editor-in-chief of Hoover’s in-house publication Defining Ideas. He was previously a research fellow at Hoover and the Virginia Hobbs Carpenter Fellow in Journalism.  A writer-at-large at the Daily Beast, he was a former editor of Newsweek and Newsweek International. Previously, he was executive editor (opinions) at Forbes, assistant managing editor and op-ed editor of the Wall Street Journal, and the New York bureau chief for The Times (of London). Born in India, he is a British citizen. A visiting scholar at New York University's Department of Journalism, he is a former lecturer in law at Trinity College, Oxford. He has also taught at NYU's Stern School of Business, the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, and the City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism. Varadarajan has a BA in law, with honors, from Oxford University.

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Recent Commentary

Analysis and Commentary

From Buddha To Bollywood

by Tunku Varadarajanvia The Wall Street Journal
Tuesday, September 20, 2016

A similar book about America—“The United States in 50 Lives,” as it were—would be awash with entrepreneurial names. But in India, capitalists have been like moneyed underlings.

Analysis and Commentary

The Digital Desi

by Tunku Varadarajanvia The Wire
Thursday, August 4, 2016

Sreenath Sreenivasan has just been appointed chief digital officer of New York City by Mayor Bill de Blasio. Tunku Varadarajan interviewed him – over WhatsApp – on what the job entails.

Analysis and Commentary

A Miserable Europe Plays Miserable Football

by Tunku Varadarajanvia Politico
Saturday, July 9, 2016

Politics, like football, is now largely about dogged and grudging accommodation, backlash and self-protection.

Featured

Modi And The Budding US-India Alliance

by Tunku Varadarajanvia Wall Street Journal
Wednesday, June 8, 2016

The prime minister’s speech to Congress sent the strongest signal yet that a major new geopolitical partnership is afoot.

Analysis and Commentary

The Bombay High Court Wants A Free Hit In The IPL. But Where’s The No Ball?

by Tunku Varadarajanvia The Wire
Saturday, April 16, 2016

Water shortage causes drought. Cricket grounds use water. Therefore cricket causes drought. This was the sprightly but fallacious reasoning of the Bombay high court in response to a recent Public Interest Litigation suit brought against the Indian Premier League, seeking to curtail the playing of cricket in the drought-stricken state of Maharashtra.

Analysis and Commentary

Reverse Swing: The Bharat Mata Test

by Tunku Varadarajanvia Indian Express
Sunday, April 10, 2016

The escalation of the National Institute of Technology, Srinagar, incident has shown us up as a truly petty people.

Analysis and Commentary

The American Scream

by Tunku Varadarajanvia Open
Friday, March 11, 2016

It is a fight between the inscrutably cynical Hillary Clinton and the swashbuckling nativist Donald Trump. The unpopular may defeat the popular in the end.

Analysis and Commentary

Reverse Swing: The Beauty Of Sedition

by Tunku Varadarajanvia Indian Express
Sunday, March 6, 2016

Let us hail Kanhaiya. If not for his politics, then certainly for the eloquence of his language.

Analysis and Commentary

Reverse Swing: Dear Mr Modi, More Growth, Less Hindutva

by Tunku Varadarajanvia Indian Express
Sunday, February 28, 2016

The ruling party should leave secularism alone. Economic reform is what will save India from itself.

Analysis and Commentary

Reverse Swing: The BJP Versus The Jholawala

by Tunku Varadarajanvia Indian Express
Sunday, February 21, 2016

Some lessons from the national embarrassment that is the JNU sedition affair. Will non-Hindutva Modi voters be left in the lurch?

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