The veteran BBC journalist Sir Mark Tully, affectionately known as the ‘voice of India,’ died on January 25 in New Delhi.
Tully passed away at 90 in Saket due to multi-organ failure following a stroke earlier in the week. He was born in Tollygunge, Calcutta, in 1935 to William Scarth Carlisle Tully, a powerful British businessman, and Patience Treby, whose family had been in India for generations. Though he married his wife Margaret in 1960, with whom he had four children, Sam, Emma, Serra, and Patrick he spent his later decades in Delhi with his partner and fellow author, Gillian Wright.
Tully’s obsession with India was both professional and personal. Despite being sent to England at age nine for schooling at Marlborough College and Cambridge, he famously described the UK as “dark and drab” compared to the bright skies of his birthplace. He returned to India in 1965 as a BBC correspondent, eventually serving as the bureau chief for 22 years. He became the definitive chronicler of the subcontinent’s most turbulent history, from the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War and the 1975 Emergency to the assassinations of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi.
His unique status as a ‘relic of the Raj’ who truly loved the nation earned him rare dual honours like a British knighthood in 2002 and India’s Padma Bhushan in 2005. Tully was often more trusted than state broadcasters, with villagers across the country waiting for his 810 kHz dispatches to confirm major events. Even after resigning from the BBC in 1994, he remained in Delhi as an Overseas Citizen of India, continuing to write acclaimed books like ‘No Full Stops in India’. His son Sam beautifully captured his legacy on his 90th birthday saying “Dil hai Hindustani, magar thoda Angrezi bhi” which means the heart is Indian, but a bit English too.