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.
