'People Are Not Fools'

A conversation with Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor of The Wire, India’s hugely successful news portal, on why this is a “particularly dangerous moment” in the world’s largest democracy.

Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor of The Wire.

By Michael Judge

When I reached Siddharth Varadarajan, co-founder and editor-in-chief of India’s hugely popular news portal, The Wire, at his home in New Delhi recently, I felt as if I was talking to an old friend. This was partly because I’d written for The Wire in the past and we’d corresponded. But mainly it was due to the fact that his older brother, the gifted New York-based journalist Tunku Varadarajan, is a dear friend who has never missed an opportunity—usually over drinks—to tell me how brilliant his brother is, and how I must interview him for TFP. “He is like the boy with his finger in the dike,” Tunku recently told me, “trying valiantly to keep out the sea of intolerant Hindu chauvinism that would wash over India.” 

That’s not just a proud big brother’s opinion. At 57, Siddharth Varadarajan has arguably done more than anyone in India since the 2014 electoral victory of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist …