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”.
He is survived by Margaret, Gillian, his four children and 10 grandchildren.
• William Mark Tully, broadcaster and author, born 24 October 1935; died 25 January 2026
