Opinion From being caged during Babri Masjid demolition to his stand against Emergency: My memories of Mark Tully

Back then, the only way to connect with BBC headquarters in London was through the Central Telegraph Office (CTO) in Faizabad. We reached Faizabad around noon, where Mark filed his first report. By 1 pm, as we were on our way back to Ayodhya, the first dome of the mosque had already fallen and the other two were being brought down. We were stopped by crowds on the outskirts of the city and decided to follow the paramilitary forces — the RAF and CRPF — as they moved toward the town. However, to our complete horror, the forces themselves were halted at a railway crossing between Faizabad and Ayodhya.

When all our efforts to reach Ayodhya were exhausted, a journalist friend, Vinod Shukla, then resident editor of Dainik Jagran, suggested a way out. Within half an hour, we managed to reach the Babri Masjid site, but by then the mosque had been completely demolished. As soon as we got out of our car, a group of violent kar sevaks armed with tridents and lathis charged at us. Most were local residents and were furious to see Mark Tully with us. They knew he was a BBC journalist and deeply resented his coverage of Ayodhya.

As the mob gathered to beat us, perhaps even kill us, one of the agitated kar sevaks suggested that killing us might disrupt the ongoing demolition, and that it made more sense to lock us up for the time being and kill us later. The five of us were locked in a room in a nearby building. Over the next two hours, a welter of emotions swept through us.

The Mahant of Bada Sthan eventually came to our rescue. He gave his shawl to Mark so he could hide under it, and we were all instructed to tie bandanas with the words “kar sevak” written on them. We were put into a Uttar Pradesh Police truck and dropped off at Hotel Shan-e-Awadh at around 8 pm.

My first introduction to Mark Tully, however, was through his dispatches on the BBC’s Hindi and Urdu services, during the early days of the Emergency. I was a child then and my father, the late Captain Abbas Ali, was jailed under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act and the Defence of India Rules for 19 long months. Mark was outspoken in his criticism of the oppressive press censorship imposed by the Indira Gandhi government and paid the price by being asked to leave the country. As soon as the Emergency was lifted and the 1977 general elections were announced, he returned to report on the fall of Indira Gandhi’s government and the formation of the Janata Party government under Morarji Desai.

During Operation Blue Star at the Golden Temple, he was again asked to leave Amritsar along with other foreign journalists, but he tag-teamed with Satish Jacob, who was on the ground, and continued his reporting from Delhi.

I met Mark in the early 1980s, and we soon became friends. He appointed me as a BBC stringer in Uttar Pradesh, and we covered many events together — the 1989 general elections, the formation of V P Singh’s National Front government, the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi agitation, the fall of V P Singh’s government, and the formation of Chandra Shekhar’s government in 1990. We were on the front lines through it all.

To me, Mark Tully remains one of the finest journalists of our time, a man of extraordinary courage, unwavering integrity, and an unshakeable commitment to the values of the fourth estate, even when those values came at great personal risk.

Qurban Ali is a senior tri-lingual (Hindi, Urdu, and English) journalist. He worked for over 14 years with the BBC World Service