Watch: Sir Mark Tully at #ExpressAdda

Mark Tully in conversation with The Indian Express’s Deputy Editor Seema Chishti (Express Photo)

Author and senior journalist Mark Tully spoke at the Express Adda in New Delhi. He was in conversation with The Indian Express’s Deputy Editor Seema Chishti. The Express Adda is a series of informal interactions organised by The Indian Express Group and features those at the centre of change.

Guests at the event in the past included the Dalai Lama, economist and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian, filmmaker Karan Johar, Union Minister Piyush Goyal, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, writer Amitav Ghosh and cricketer Virat Kohli.

From the mid-1960s, Tully’s voice was an important source of credible news — BBC being the only alternate to news on All India Radio at the time — for generations of Indians. Since joining the British broadcaster’s India bureau in 1965, Tully is now among the most felicitated foreign journalists in the country.

Born in 1935 in Tollygunge, Tully was one of the six children of his businessman father. After spending close to a decade in the country, he was sent to England to study before returning to join the BBC. He was one of the 40 foreign journalists who were thrown out of India by Indira Gandhi’s government for refusing to agree to government’s censorship rules under the Emergency. After Gandhi lost the elections in 1977, Tully was back, reporting in and on the country of his birth.

Tully has witnessed and reported some of the most significant events in the subcontinent, including the Indo-Pak wars, Operation Blue Star, Bhopal gas tragedy, the assassinations of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. The Padma Shri in 1992, a Knighthood in 2002 and the Padma Bhushan in 2005 are markers of how treasured the veteran journalist is in both India and England.