Kolkata: Veteran journalist Mark Tully, a chronicler of India and an acclaimed author, breathed his last at a private hospital here on Sunday, his close friend said. Tully was 90.
“Mourning Mark Tully, probably the greatest radio journalist of his generation who took India to the world and who gave the BBC credibility in India. Of his many books No Full Stops in India was brilliant in predicting what India would become. RIP,” Vir Sanghvi posted on X.
The award-winning journalist was ailing for some time and had been admitted to the Max Hospital in Saket for the past week.
Born in Calcutta (now Kolkata) on October 24, 1935, Tully was the chief of bureau for the BBC, New Delhi, for 22 years.
His father was the director of a railroad and a partner in a holding company that owned a bank, an insurance firm, and tea plantations. After the Second World War, his parents sent him to boarding school in the United Kingdom. He later took theology courses at Cambridge University and then entered a seminary.
Tully returned to London in 1969, to head the Hindi service and then the West Asia service – for which he covered the Bangladesh War of Independence in 1971.
In 1971, Tully was appointed BBC correspondent in New Delhi, and named bureau chief a few years later, responsible for covering the South Asia region – which included India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. It was a post he held for twenty years, until his retirement in 1994. His distinctive voice, the voice of the BBC, was recognized and revered by generations of Indians.
His work with the broadcaster is underlined by coverage of historic episodes in post-Independence Indian history.
From the Bangladesh war of 1971 to the Emergency of 1975-77, the execution of former Pakistan president Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1979, Operation Blue Star, the assassination of Indira Gandhi, and the anti-Sikh riots in 1984, the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, and the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992.
Operation Blue Star and the Punjab problem were the subjects of Tully’s first book, “Amritsar: Mrs Gandhi’s Last Battle” (1985), co-written with journalist Satish Jacob.
Tully’s first major book on his years in India came in 1988 in the form of “No Full Stops in India”, condensing his more than two decades of work in the country in a collection of 10 journalistic essays covering some of the prominent news events, including Operation Blue Star, Roop Kanwar Sati case, Ramanand Sagar’s “Ramayan”, and the Kumbh Mela that he witnessed in 1977.
