Sir Mark Tully, former journalist. File | Photo credit: The Hindu
Mark Tully, who died at a private hospital in Delhi on Sunday (January 25, 2026), aged 90, once said that working at the BBC for decades made him a household name in South Asia, but also quietly changed the way he wrote. “For some reason, I would stop writing after writing 300 words,” he recalled at the launch of the book at the British Council, explaining that his job at the BBC allowed him 300 words for a news report, and writing one word more was not recommended because it would go against the norm of news writing for radio. Yet for Tully, regardless of the medium, it was always the story that mattered most. And he was most fascinated by the story of modern independent India.
Early life
Mark Tully was born in Calcutta in 1935 to William Scarth Carlisle Tully and Patience Trebi. In the same year, the Government of India Act was passed, setting in motion the transfer of power that would be completed 12 years later. His father was a senior partner in the commercial agency Gillanders and Arbuthnot, and the family lived comfortably in what was then Calcutta. Outside, the world was rocked by the Quit India movement, communal violence and the Second World War; at home, Tully was conditioned by the ethos of the waning Raj.
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One day, his nanny slapped him after discovering that the family driver was teaching him how to count in Hindi. “That’s the servant’s language, not yours!” she exclaimed. A strict nanny prevented him from learning Indian languages, but Tully returned to India in the early 1960s to become an assistant representative at the BBC’s New Delhi branch. Although Tully saw Indian festivals like Kartik Purnima in Puri and Durga Puja in Kolkata as a child, his childhood and education in the UK shaped him. Therefore, he often liked to refer to himself as a “relic of the Raj” in conversations with friends.
Carving out space for the BBC
Tully’s career at the BBC was challenging from the start. In the 1960s Akashvani ruled the airwaves and big names like Melville De Mellow were the undisputed rulers. Making space in the world of radio broadcasting dominated by Akashvani and Radio Ceylon was no easy task. Despite the hardships and government pressure, the BBC under Tully carved out its niche with coverage of the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War, the 1971 Liberation War and the birth of Bangladesh, the 1975 Emergency, the Punjab Rebellion of the early 1980s and Operation Blue Star, on 5 June 1980 Tully and the 198th front provided history.
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In December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. As Soviet tanks rolled in, foreign news agencies left Afghanistan. Tully and his intrepid colleague Satish Jacob began waiting outside the arrivals terminal of New Delhi International Airport and pieced together reports on the situation in Afghanistan by interviewing passengers who had arrived on the Kabul-Delhi route. It was during these meetings that they discovered that Murtaza Bhutto, the elder son of the assassinated Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, frequently visited India in the hope of gaining support from Indira Gandhi as she plotted revenge against the Pakistani military government led by General Zia ul Haq. Later, Tully and Jacob met Murtaza at a hotel in central Delhi, shared Scotch whiskey and chatted.
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Legends of Mark Tully
Delhi’s journalism fraternity is rich with Mark Tully legends. One such episode from the 1975 Emergency was recounted by Tully himself in his book India’s Unending Journey (2007, Ebury Publishing). Hours after Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency, rumors spread that Tully had broadcast on the BBC that a senior minister had resigned in protest and that other Cabinet members were under house arrest. Information and Broadcasting Minister Inder Kumar Gujral received an order from “Indira Gandhi’s inner circle”, saying: “Send for Mark Tully, pull down his trousers, give him a few lashes and send him to jail. Gujral later told Tully that he refused the order, saying that imprisoning people was the home minister’s job, not his. IK Gujral checked the government’s monitoring reports and found that Tully had not read any such report.”
Tully served as head of the BBC in India for 22 years. After finishing his work in radio, he started making documentaries and wrote several books about India. Knighted in 2002 and awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2005, Sir Mark was a familiar face at the Press Club of India and the India International Center – always available for a quick chat, whether about Mother Teresa or Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the figures he covered. These were the qualities that saw Sir Mark Tully transcend the position of BBC Bureau Chief and become the ‘Voice of India’.
Published – 25 Jan 2026 21:56 IST
