Sir Mark Tully : The Christian who believes in Karma.
Sir Mark Tully obituary (The Guardian, Sunday, 25th January, 2026)
BBC correspondent and author whose sensitive reporting from India made him a revered public figure in the subcontinent.
In 2017 Mark Tully was making a documentary for the BBC World Service to coincide with the 70th anniversary of partition – the moment that marked the end of British colonial rule in India and the creation of Pakistan. As Tully toured locations across the subcontinent, it was clear that his standing as the BBC’s “voice of India” still endured, even though he had ceased to be its correspondent in the country more than 20 years earlier.
Everywhere he went – the documentary’s producer, Frank Stirling, recalled – he could not walk down the street without people coming up to him wanting to shake his hand. In the eyes of the Indian public, Tully, who has died aged 90, was more than a foreign correspondent; he was a public figure, known throughout the country thanks to his authoritative but sensitive reporting on often tumultuous events.
Prominent among these events were the Bhopal disaster, the siege of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, and the assassination of the prime minister Indira Gandhi, all in 1984, with Tully demonstrating a deep understanding of the country’s complex and combustible politics.
Tully’s name was synonymous with India to a degree that didn’t happen with colleagues serving in other posts around the world. He was the BBC’s Delhi bureau chief from 1972 to 1993, and its South Asia correspondent for another year after that. His beat took in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. BBC chiefs visiting India depended on him to show them round and open doors.
The sense of belonging Tully felt in India stemmed not just from the fact that he had been born there. The country fuelled his fascination with the spiritual side of life, and that fascination fed into his broadcasts.
From 1995 to 2019, after retiring from reporting duties, he was the main presenter of the Radio 4 programme Something Understood, in which he explored the meaning of life through selections of poetry, prose and music. But Tully, who had studied theology at Cambridge University with a view to entering the priesthood, was never regarded as a sermoniser.
“I still cling to Christianity and identify myself as Christian,” he told Radio Times in 2019. “But living in India with so many religions around me, I no longer believe that Christianity is the only way to God.”
Tully was born in Kolkata, the son of William, an accountant in one of the leading managing agencies of the British Raj, and his wife, Patience (nee Treby).
He was sent to the UK for his education, attending Twyford school in Winchester and then Marlborough college. His time at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, was followed by further studies at a seminary, but “I was always rather rebellious and I didn’t like the discipline,”he said in an interview with the Unesco Courier. “Also, I was a good beer drinker.”
Tully returned to India to take up an administrative job with the BBC in 1965 before becoming a talks writer with its Eastern Service in 1969. Three years later he took on the role that made him famous.
Operation Blue Star – to give the Amritsar siege its official description – provided Tully with the subject of his first book, co-authored with Satish Jacob, Amritsar: Mrs Gandhi’s Last Battle (1985). The incident was, he said, “one of the most extraordinary battles in military history,” in which the Indian army laid siege to the Golden Temple complex before attacking the Sikh fundamentalists who had occupied it in pursuit of the goal of their own homeland. Tully was on the spot as mortars exploded and gunfire was exchanged.
His other books included From Raj to Rajiv (1988); No Full Stops in India (1991); India in Slow Motion (2002), co-authored with Gillian Wright; India’s Unending Journey (2007); India: The Road Ahead (2011); and Upcountry Tales: Once Upon a Time in the Heart of India (2017).
Most of his reporting was for radio but he made appearances on the TV news and in 1996 he presented the BBC TV series The Lives of Jesus, and wrote an accompanying book.
Tully’s departure from the BBC was controversial. Trouble started brewing in 1993 when he delivered a lecture at the Radio Academy in which he accused the then director-general, John Birt, of “turning the BBC into a secretive monolith with poor ratings and a demoralised staff,” adding that he didn’t “think Mr Birt understands what the BBC was or what it should become.”
He was transferred from staff to a two-year contract, the protracted wrangling over the terms eventually leading him to resign. His long tenure at the helm of Something Understood then began, and he remained in Delhi.
Knighted in 2002, he was also the recipient of two of India’s highest honours – the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan, both in recognition of distinguished service.
In 1960, Tully married Margaret Butler, with whom he had two daughters, Sarah and Emma, and two sons, Sam and Patrick. He lived with her on his visits to London, while sharing his Delhi home with Wright, his partner. Once asked about this arrangement, Tully described it as “complicated.”
William Mark Tully, broadcaster and author, born 24 October 1935; died 25 January 2026
Mark Tully on his life in India (2015) https://www.outlooktraveller.com/
In 1965, when Mark Tully moved back to India, Delhi was a city of bicycles. Hauz Khas was still a village with buffaloes and all of East Delhi was a jungle
I was born in 1935 in Calcutta. My father worked in Gillanders Arbuthnot, which was the oldest and biggest of the managing agencies. We lived in No 7, Regent Park, which was a big house with a lovely garden. And it was my home until I was nine.
We had a European nanny and her main job was to stop us from speaking to the servants too much and learning Hindi, because her greater ambition really was that we should remain, although living in India, strictly English. Nanny ruled the place quite strictly. We would only see our parents at limited times of day. Early in the morning Nanny would take us for a ride. We had two ponies one was called Cherry, and when she gave birth to another one, he was called Pip, as he was a pip out of a cherry. After the ride, we would be taken to our parents bedroom where they would be having chota hazri & mash green bananas and tea. We would have breakfast with them. The next time we would see them would be in the evening at their drinks time. We would come down in our dressing gowns, having had our bath, and then there would be a strict time at which we would go to bed. One of the greatest excitements in those days was being allowed to stay up late.
Despite Nanny we became very fond of some of the servants, particularly the nursery boy, Zafar. He was a very kind chap and every time he went out he would bring us some little toys back, which I thought was wonderful, seeing how little he earned.
Another important person in my childhood was my grandfather, a jute broker. He didn&rsquot live with us but would visit often. Because he was sort of semi-retired he often came at tea-time. He defied the family rules and taught us nursery rhymes in Hindi. Nanny who was very fond of grandfather would pretend to be very cross with him.
On many Sundays we would go by bicycle or walking to Behala where there was the Oxford Mission and a remarkable priest called Father Douglas. They used to have a tea party every Sunday. I remember especially the Christmas Eve service of Behala which was very much part of our Christmas. It was a very beautiful service, with lovely singing and incense and everything. The service at Behala gave me my lasting love of Anglican liturgy and what I might call Anglo-Saxonesque worship.
There are several things I think when I think back about Calcutta. I remember the excitement of an ever-growing family. I was number two and by the time we left India in 1945 there were six of us. So there was always the excitement of a new baby in the house.
I remember the riverside very well. I was absolutely terrified of the puja processions, when they would take the goddess to be immersed in the Hooghly. Because there was all this noise, these very terrifying images of the goddess and, of course, the fact that we had been brought up to believe that one should not commit idolatry. In later life, of course, I came to have a great appreciation for Hinduism.
Every winter we would go to Puri by train and stay at the Vienna Hotel. In those days you used to have those wonderful carriages, where you would have an entire compartment for the family. In Puri there was great rivalry between the children we each had our favourite fisherman. Mine was fisherman no. 21.
The Viceroy used to come to Calcutta every Christmas and he gave huge, great parties. The thing that sticks in my mind about that party is the Calcutta Fire Brigade demonstration where they would have these great big ladders which they would climb up and shoot water all over the place.
Tollygunge Club was just up the road and we would be taken to play and swim there by Nanny. We used to have tea on the lawn at Tolly Club with my parents. There used to be boys with red flags to keep the crows away. My mother would always tell me that my father proposed to her on the 18th Hole of the Tollygunge Golf Club.
The other place we were very fond of was the Calcutta Swimming Club, on Strand. We used to have wonderful breakfasts there. From time to time we were taken into Calcutta by my mother. There were huge great shops like Hall and Anderson, Army and Navy Stores, and Whiteaway & Laidlaw’s. All in all it was a very European life.
I remember my home perhaps with all the more affection, for, at age five, I was sent to school in Darjeeling during the War. We went to a special school, the New School, set up for English children who couldn&rsquot get back to school in England because of the War.
We used to go to school on the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, of which my father was a director (being director of Gillanders Arbuthnot, which ran the DHR). And I loved that railway. Going on that train was some sort of tamasha. You would get out of the train and run up the khud, then get up the khud before the train got there, hanging out of the door, that sort of thing. And all the children would be crying when the train went out of the station, but a little later we all sort of got together and started having fun and forgot about it. So I guess my love of trains came partly from there. It was magical for a kid then, Howrah Station, huge gates, all those engines, people rushing by.
The beauty of the New School was that we were very free there, and wandered around Darjeeling. We used to go up to the American recreation camp, where we were given chocolates. In the market I was fascinated by the rickshaw people playing crown and anchor.
We got back to England just before the War ended. It was a huge shock, moving from this rather luxurious home in Calcutta to my mother’s place. My father stayed back in India for a few years. My mother had no servants, no help, no nothing. The weather was bleak and grim compared with India and then I was admitted to prep school which was a complete contrast to the Darjeeling school. It was one of those traditional schools where you were shut up behind high walls.
I realised the imprint of Calcutta on my mind the day I moved to Delhi in 1965, 20 years after we left. I was standing on the balcony of my room in Claridges Hotel. It was winter and there was a lovely smell of winter flowers plus the smell of malis cooking their food on a dung fire. With the smell of the flowers and that smoke my whole childhood seemed to rush through my head.
My first incarnation in Delhi I lived in Hauz Khas, then in Jor Bagh, finally settling in Nizamuddin.
In those days, Hauz Khas was not a village in the sense it is a village now. It was still a village with buffaloes, etc. The only hotels really were the Imperial (the Oberoi was just coming up), Claridges. Hauz Khas I was told I shouldn&rsquot go live in, because it was so far people wouldn&rsquot come for dinner parties.
One of my early memories of Delhi is of a lunch party given by Amita Malik. I remember it for two things the fish head curry, which was a startling culinary introduction for a newcomer, and the bright, bright blue sky. And in those days one used to look forward to winter in Delhi. Now I rather dread December and January.
Delhi was totally different then. I would describe it as a city of bicycles then. There were very few cars on the roads and no flyovers. And, of course, the whole of east Delhi was virtually a jungle. Where all the institutional buildings are now, I remember we had jackals. Andrews Ganj was a huge great market garden in those days. The Ring Road was quite new. A correspondent friend of mine bought a house near the ridge in old Delhi as the Ring Road made getting to New Delhi quite easy.
The other huge difference between then and now is the lack of security. In the late 1970s you could just walk into Morarji Desai&rsquos house, when he was prime minister. There used to be a guard at the gate, you would just ask him, is the old man there Morarji was a very friendly person, and if he was there the guard would say yes. No search, no nothing like that.
I have lived in my current flat in Nizamuddin (East) for 26 years. Nizamuddin is a lovely part of Delhi, next to Humayun&rsquos Tomb. It&rsquos very central. There&rsquos that beautiful wall, and many apartments have lovely views of the monuments themselves.
Eastern UP to me is the heart of India, and I like Varanasi very much. I feel it to be a very poetic part of the country, a very Indian part. And I sometimes wonder whether my affection for the place does not have a genetic origin, After all, my great great-grandfather was an opium agent in Ghazipur.
Mark Tully visits the Whitefield ashram of Sathya Sai Baba. This is an excerpt form ‘Lives of Jesus’ – Part 1 (Jesus the God) of a Four-part series following Mark Tully as he explores and reassess the life of Jesus. In this episode, Tully made the inspired decision to travel to India to film Sathya Sai Baba, the Indian guru and spiritual leader. Sai Baba was worshipped by his followers as a miracle worker, a saviour and a reincarnation of an earlier saint (Sai Baba of Shirdi), and so provided a helpful parallel to understand how Jesus came to be worshipped as God incarnate.
Lives of Jesus, a four-part series presented by the BBC’s India correspondent Mark Tully, and made by the BBC’s Religion Department. It aired in December 1996. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6nvbU-oaoc&ab_channel=AshramsofIndia
Mark Tully PLAYLIST https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfvx-cbEOmxB3KiB6X-Ru2XWBjx4ys7l9
Early Western devotees of Sathya Sai Baba from the 1940s to the 1960s https://ashramsofindia.com/early-western-devotees-of-sathya-sai-baba-from-the-1940s-to-the-1960s/
Early Western devotees of Sathya Sai Baba from the 1970s to the 1980s https://ashramsofindia.com/early-western-devotees-of-sathya-sai-baba-from-the-1970s-to-the-1980s/