Srinagar, Jan 25 — Veteran journalist and legendary BBC broadcaster Mark Tully, whose voice shaped international reporting on India for more than three decades, passed away in Delhi on Sunday. He was 90.
Family sources said Tully suffered a stroke late Friday night and was rushed to a private hospital, where he died this afternoon.
“For over a quarter of a century, one of the most recognised and trusted radio voices in India was that of Mark Tully,” UNESCO Courier once wrote, calling him a “living witness” to the era when radio was the primary link between journalists and the public.
Tully, who served as the BBC’s New Delhi bureau chief for 20 years, covered many of the defining moments of modern Indian history — from the Emergency and Operation Blue Star to the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and the demolition of the Babri Masjid.
Born on October 24, 1935, in Tollygunge in present-day West Bengal, Sir William Mark Tully joined the BBC in the 1960s and made India his permanent home. He resigned from the broadcaster in July 1994 after more than 30 years of service.
On a lighter note, Tully often described himself as “the last relic of the Raj.”
His first major assignment in India was the funeral of Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in January 1966. In the early 1970s, the Indian government temporarily shut down BBC operations after the airing of documentaries such as Calcutta and Phantom India, which were viewed as critical of the country.
“Phantom India,” a film by Louis Malle broadcast by the BBC, had drawn strong objections from the Indira Gandhi government, which asked the network not to air it.
During the Emergency period, Tully was withdrawn from India and sent to East Pakistan, where he became one of the first journalists to gain access and interview Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
He returned to India in 1977 and later conducted several interviews with Indira Gandhi. He was among the few reporters to speak with Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale days before the Army launched Operation Blue Star at the Golden Temple.
Over the years, Tully also interviewed SGPC leader Gurcharan Singh Tohra and extensively chronicled India’s political transition in the 1990s.
A prolific author, he wrote and co-wrote several books, including No Full Stops in India, Amritsar: Mrs Gandhi’s Last Battle, The Heart of India, India in Slow Motion, and India: The Road Ahead, along with collections of short stories.
Tully spent much of his later life in New Delhi and McLeodGanj, maintaining what friends described as a deep curiosity about India’s social and spiritual fabric. A devout Anglican, he often spoke about the shared moral and spiritual threads between Christianity and India’s plural traditions.
He is survived by his family.