Mark Tully passed away recently. His was a voice I grew up with. BBC World Service was a constant companion. As I wrote:
I grew up listening to BBC World Service on the radio. Because of my eyesight troubles, the doctor had suggested that I don’t read at night. (And there wasn’t much TV to watch in late 1970s India.) For a 12-year-old, that was a hard decision. It was then that I discovered the joys of radio, and especially BBC. I had a big Philips radio, which I would position in the balcony to ensure good reception. The short waves brought the distinctive British accent into my room. For many years, the radio was my best friend. I spent hours listening. The only competition BBC faced was when cricket matches were played, and I would tune in to whichever broadcaster was doing the ball-by-ball commentary.
BBC World Service brought me news, analysis, quizzes, humour, science, plays and more. It became my window to the world. I could close my eyes and be anywhere in the world. I knew the voices of all the news announcers and presenters. The diversity of BBC programming gave me an education beyond the classroom.
One of those distinctive voices was Mark Tully. His reports from across the sub-continent brought an authenticity that was missing in the government-controlled media of Doordarshan and All India Radio. He understood something essential: that loving a country means telling its truths, even the uncomfortable ones.
As The Economist wrote in its obit: “In more than 20 years as the BBC’s Delhi bureau chief, in the midst of this teeming, tumultuous country, his job was to insist on balance. His commentary was not aimed at the powerful or the elite. It went out in six languages to 50m listeners, many of them illiterate. He connected them to the world, just as he connected his British listeners to ordinary Indians, reporting the issues of the day not merely from offices of state but from tea-houses, villages and railway stations.”
Pratap Bhanu Mehta wrote: “It is important to recall the institutional and political context that made [Mark] him indispensable. The foreign press has always had an outsized importance in India, largely because our own press has been censored or constrained. The BBC, in effect, had to perform the role of a local radio station, since India had none. But the BBC was also, then, a genuinely great institution. It had its biases and blind spots, but if it commanded authority, it was because of journalists like Mark. One could occasionally disagree with a particular judgment, but remarkably, he never lost trust…He was unique because, on so many occasions, his voice constituted the only first draft of history available at the moment.”
I echo these sentiments of Karan Thapar: “In his time, Mark was the BBC in India. Actually, that was probably true of the whole subcontinent. From the meanest rural hamlet to the grand portals of Rashtrapati Bhawan, his name was recalled before that of the corporation he served. Millions would tune in just to hear him. And, they unfailingly believed what he said.”
I had the opportunity to meet him a few years ago at an event in NCPA Mumbai. I spoke to him for a few minutes and thanked him for the reporting that was so much a part of my growing up years. He was gracious, unhurried, genuinely curious—much like his broadcasts. That calm, measured voice I had heard crackling through short waves was now right there in front of me. Meeting him felt like completing a circle begun in a 12-year-old’s balcony.
Mark Tully was the Voice of India when we so needed one.
