India’s voice to the world

Mark Tully represented the one quality that all journalists aspire to: Credibility.

- ADITI PHADNIS

He died at 90, still a British citizen but in his soul and spirit, an Indian.

For many decades, he was the voice of India on the BBC World Service: Not just during the Emergency, when he broadcast stories about censorship, midnight arrests, extrajudicial killings, and was expelled, only to return 18 months later, but also during the demolition of Babri Masjid, when screaming crowds in Ayodhya chased him, chanting “BBC murdabad” and “Mark Tully murdabad”.His reportage of the Indian Peace Keeping Force, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and other groups in north and east Sri Lanka, and later, Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, is landmark journalism.

Indians here, and around the globe, turned to him to learn the facts about the storming of the Golden Temple, the back story of the creation of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, and the anti-Sikh riots that followed Indira Gandhi's assassination. For him, writing and broadcasting about politics was never about suspending

For Mark Tully, writing and broadcasting about politics was never about suspending judgement or political correctness. It was always about telling the story in context

judgement or political correctness. It was always about telling the story in context.

Tully was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and went to school in Darjeeling. His father was a businessman in India when it was still a jewel in the crown. His mother’s family had been in Bangladesh for generations. He went to a public school in the United Kingdom, joined the army, took a history degree at Cambridge, and studied — unsuccessfully — to be a priest. “It was decided I was not suitable for the clergy,” he would tell the Los Angeles Times many years later. Why? “Drinking, mainly,’ he replied.