Mark Tully: The British Journalist Who Left An Indelible Mark On Indian Media |
I got to know Mark Tully, the BBC radio legend who passed away last Saturday, nearly half a century ago, in the spring of 1977, just when the 19-month cloud of dictatorship over India had suddenly vanished after the Emergency regime was ousted in a landmark election. Mark, a victim of the Emergency, having been arbitrarily banished from his BBC post in Delhi and the country for defying self-censorship rules, had come back triumphantly to report and rejoice in the return of democracy.
I had my own way of celebrating the downfall of the Indira Gandhi-led Congress government, penning my first book (For Reasons of State: Delhi under Emergency) at the age of 24 with my fellow reporter, John Dayal, using valuable material that had piled up in our notebooks on the many excesses, including brutal sterilisations and home demolitions, mostly of the slum poor, by state authorities that could not be published because we had been muzzled.
Reporting a historic political shift
Not surprisingly, we drew close, meeting frequently at news events, recording both the dismantling of the once-invincible but now devastated Congress as well as the coming together of a motley group of victorious opposition parties under the umbrella of the newly formed Janata Party. Interestingly, Mark was one of the few foreign correspondents who shared my enthusiasm for this risky coalition experiment in a........