The Foreigner India Came to Trust

The Indian media fraternity appears unable to live up to Mark Tully's standards of balance, honesty, trustworthiness and credibility

- Harish Khare

NEARLY a century ago, a foreigner, an American historian named Katherine Mayo, wrote a book in 1927 called Mother India.

It was a brutal catalogue of almost every wart on the Indian social and religious landscape. The book touched a raw nerve. There was outrage and anger. Mahatma Gandhi, of all people, led the chorus of denunciation, calling the book “a drain inspector's report”. No foreigner, it seemed, was entitled to point out our defects and deficiencies. We will take offence.

Then came Independence. We were blessed to have a man called Jawaharlal Nehru at the helm. He was a self-assured leader and India, under him, was not easily troubled by the outsider's critical observations. We knew what we were trying to accomplish, and took the outsider's pinpricks and quibbling in our stride.

It was in the years of post-Nehru uncertainty that we rediscovered the Katherine Mayo syndrome. We bristled at the foreigner who was less than appreciative of our difficulties and dilemmas. The middle classes resented any outsider pointing out our moral hypocrisy. We took umbrage at a Nirad C. Chaudhuri or a V. S. Naipaul for being less than reverential towards our icons. We even denounced Satyajit Ray for showing “our poverty” just to win a little applause from the western elite. No foreign observer, correspondent or chronicler could get it right or satisfy us.

Mark Tully of the British Broadcasting Corporation (