Mark Tully, Chronicler Of Modern India, No More

Mark Tully, the doyen journalist and author who documented India with an insightful eye, passed away at the age of 90. 

He passed away at a hospital in New Delhi, where he had been undergoing treatment. His longtime friend and veteran journalist Satish Jacob confirmed the news.

Tully was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata) on October 24, 1935. He was the chief of bureau for the BBC’s New Delhi bureau for more than two decades, and also hosted the BBC Radio 4 programme ‘Something Understood’. 

Tully’s measured voice and refusal to sensationalise brought credibility to the airwaves at critical moments in modern Indian history. He covered events like the 1975–1977 Emergency, the 1984 assassination of former PM Indira Gandhi and the ensuing anti-Sikh violence, Operation Blue Star, the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition and its aftermath, economic liberalisation, and countless elections and social upheavals. 

Tully was expelled from India during the Emergency, but allowed back later. Criticised by both Indian nationalists and sections of the British establishment, and never wavered from his commitment to fair-minded journalism. 

He was knighted in 2002 and awarded the Padma Bhushan by the Indian government in 2005. His work leaves an enduring legacy on India-related narratives, reflecting the depth and diversity of the nation he explored in his writings.

Tully's books like No Full Stops in India (1988), The Heart of India (1995), India in Slow Motion (2002, co-authored with Gillian Wright), India: The Road Ahead (2011), and several collections of short stories, painted unflinching portraits of a changing India. 

Tully lived much of his later life in New Delhi and McLeodganj. He engaged with ordinary people and maintained an abiding curiosity about the country’s complexities. 

In the hours after his death, journalists and public figures across India took to social media to remember Tully as more than a correspondent. They remembered him as an institution in himself, a mentor, and an embodiment of integrity and warmth. Veteran journalist Yusuf Jameel, who reported for BBC earlier, shared a photograph with Tully, calling him “the guru of broadcast journalism” and recalling his profound, nuanced understanding of Kashmir, a beat Jameel covered for decades.

Senior journalist Pervaiz Alam posted memories of an evening with Tully at the India International Centre (IIC) terrace in March 2025, describing how his presence “warmed every heart” and lit up conversations among colleagues.

Author Mirza Waheed, who once worked with the BBC in London, hailed him as “the finest broadcast journalist of his generation,” whose “friendly, avuncular voice will live on.”

Activist John Dayal, who knew Tully since 1977, wrote that India had lost one of its most perceptive chroniclers—someone who did not merely report on the country, but listened to it, understood it, and loved it across its many contradictions.

Tully also wrote extensively for Outlook and his essays reflected the measured curiosity that marked his journalism. His pieces ranged from language, politics, economics and culture. From reflections on Hindi and linguistic identity in pieces such as No Fullstops For Hindi…Yet, to political and regional readings like In the Arid East, the Palm Stirs Faintly. He examined economic orthodoxies in The Poverty of Economy, offered literary meditations in My Book of the Century and A Steamy Affair, the middle and middle path and reflected on global and domestic shifts in essays such as Every Which Way and When Dragons Purr.