Tully, a part of India’s story for 3 decades, will live on in the memory of many
On Sunday came the news of the passing of Mark Tully, one of radio’s best-known voices in these parts of the globe—a respected journalist and long-time friend to the region. Tully, a Brit born in Calcutta, was a talented storyteller, could always be trusted to “tell the story like it is” and had tonnes of empathy for the people he reported about.
For those who listened to the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) as an important source of news, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, Tully was Mr Dependable. If you couldn’t get a story confirmed anywhere else, you could try the BBC. Many tuned in here on the day when most were left guessing what had happened to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. On the BBC, more likely than not, would be the voice of Mark Tully. His calm, reassuring and never judgemental approach made you feel you were listening to a favourite uncle, though separated by geography, culture and nationality.
He covered many of the nation-defining developments of those times. Indo-Pak conflicts, the Bhopal gas tragedy, Operation Blue Star, Indira Gandhi’s assassination, anti-Sikh riots, the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. He was expelled for a while during the Emergency but went on to get an OBE (Order of the British Empire), a Padma Shri, a British Knighthood, and the Padma Bhushan, in that order.
Tully, to some, goes with the credibility that radio once commanded, even if the BBC now has its share of critics in India. One of his books, ‘India in Slow Motion’, also features Goa and his encounter with this region, told in his typical, colourful, interesting Tullesque style.
Online, one can find descriptions of how he started with the BBC in the 1960s, first in an office job, but quickly moved on to journalism. Elsewhere he has described how his knowledge of a nursery rhyme in Hindi (he did his early schooling in India) got him his BBC slot. UNESCO Courier, the magazine, described how he covered India for one of the world’s most popular radio stations of its time for over three decades. It wrote: “He was threatened, beaten, and even expelled from India—but he always returned. He eventually never left, making New Delhi his home.”
In a way, remembering Tully strongly reminds us of the role that radio once played across the globe, but more so in India. It informed, educated, entertained and connected the millions. In times when literacy was starkly limited, it reached so many. It was also an inexpensive and easily accessible technology.
Roughly from the late 1930s to the 1970s, radio in India was the country’s most powerful public storyteller and unifier. All India Radio carried news, patriotic messages, classical music, folk traditions, educational talks, farm advisories, radio drama and children’s programmes into homes that often had few newspapers and no electricity. It thus shaped tastes, language norms, political awareness and even daily routines.
But radio’s dominance began to fade from the late 1970s onwards. Television slowly displaced it as the primary mass medium, though radio never quite lost its habit of whispering to the nation. Newspapers kept their own space, even in times of pressure from cyberspace, and they continue to do so.
Tully was deeply a part of that story. Even if he’s gone, his voice will continue to ring familiar, not just in online recordings and interviews, but even in the memory of many.
