NEW DELHI: Veteran BBC correspondent Mark Tully, known to millions as the broadcaster’s “voice of India” for covering defining moments across the subcontinent, died on Sunday aged 90.
Born in India in 1935 under British rule, he made the country his home and his career, becoming arguably the best-known foreign correspondent in the country.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a statement that he was “saddened by the passing of Sir Mark Tully, a towering voice of journalism”.
Tully, who died in New Delhi, covered the 1971 Bangladesh war and the demolition of the Mughal-era Babri mosque in Uttar Pradesh in 1992.
“His connect with India and the people of our nation was reflected in his works,” Modi added.
BBC News interim chief Jonathan Munro said that “Sir Mark opened India to the world through his reporting, bringing the vibrancy and diversity of the country to audiences in the UK and around the world.”
Tully studied theology at Cambridge University before joining a seminary.
But he returned to India in 1965, joining the BBC in New Delhi as an office administrator.
After a brief stint in London at the BBC’s Hindi and World Service, he was appointed the public broadcaster’s correspondent in New Delhi in 1971.
Tully was named bureau chief a few years later, overseeing coverage of South Asia, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka - a position he held for two decades.
“For generations across our subcontinent, his calm and unmistakable voice was synonymous with news,” Hardeep Singh Puri, India’s petroleum minister said in a statement.
“Kolkata-born Tully reported on some of the most defining moments in the region’s history,” he added.
He resigned from the BBC in 1994 amid a dramatic overhaul of the organization, criticising the then director general John Birt, denouncing the “revolution” taking place at the corporation, beginning with a “sweeping attack on the BBC’s journalism”.
After resigning, he continued working as a freelancer and writing books.
Tully was awarded the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan, among India’s highest civilian honours, and rarely bestowed on foreigners.
Britain also knighted him for his services to broadcasting and journalism in 2002 - a recognition Tully would later describe as “an honour to India”. The Times of India called him “a chronicler of India”.
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