Mark Tully: Year

“During the nine years that Calcutta was my home, I lived a life which would now be seen as thoroughly politically incorrect. From our youngest days, we were never allowed to forget that we were different - we were English, not Indian. We had an English nanny who saw to that. She supervised us 24x7 and once, finding me learning to count from our driver, she cuffed my head, saying "that's the servants' language, not yours". Inevitably, we were not allowed to play with Indian children. There were even class barriers to the European children we were allowed to play with. My nanny would not allow us to play with children who only had Indian or Anglo-Indian nannies because their parents couldn't afford a "proper nanny", as she saw herself. European society in the Calcutta of those days was divided by a strict class system, not dissimilar to the caste system. Members of the ICS, were considered the Brahmins (the elite caste), while the members of the Indian army were regarded as the Rajputs (the warrior caste). As a businessman, my father was a Vaisya (trading caste), dismissed by the snooty ICS and army as a mere "boxwallah".”

Mark Tully

Why Mark Tully needs a Calcutta birth certificate at 78, 2013

Life , Children , Home , Parent

“Since I expressed my views…in July last year, I have sought to negotiate a position which would allow me to defend my stance in public, especially when it is questioned. The BBC has required that I do not speak on matters on which my stance is already known. That is not acceptable to me. I have therefore asked the corporation to accept my resignation as South Asia correspondent.”

Mark Tully

When he quit BBC due to differences with John Birt, the Director General of BBC.
Source: Peter Victor, " Tully quits BBC http://www.independent.co.uk/news/tully-quits-bbc-1412865.html," The Independent, 10 July 1994

Question

“My connection with Calcutta stretches back a long way. It goes back at least to 1857, the year of what my maternal great-grandfather would have called the Indian Mutiny. He managed to escape the uprising in eastern Uttar Pradesh in a boat down the Ganges to Calcutta. My maternal grandfather made his living selling jute in the city. He bought the jute in what is now Bangladesh, which is how my mother happened to be born there. But she met and married my father in Calcutta. He was the first of his family to come to India where he became one of the senior partners of Gillanders Arbuthnot, a Calcutta-based firm.”

Mark Tully

Why Mark Tully needs a Calcutta birth certificate at 78, 2013

Family , Way , Maternity

“I am very proud not just of my connection with Calcutta but my connection with India which is approaching 50 years now. I do not like being called an expat. That's why I do hope to become an Overseas Citizen of India. That will mean I will be acknowledged as a citizen of the two countries I feel I belong to, India and Britain. I will bring together the two nationalities which were separated during my childhood.”

Mark Tully

Why Mark Tully needs a Calcutta birth certificate at 78, 2013

Hope , Feeling , Childhood , Country

“In the 78 years since I was born in what I hope I am still entitled to call Calcutta - not Tollygunge - all this has rightly been swept aside, and my life bears no resemblance to my childhood. Almost all my friends in India are Indian. I have an Indian son-in-law and an Indian daughter-in-law. I do know an Indian language, although I would know it a lot better if more people would speak to me in Hindi rather than English.”

Mark Tully

Why Mark Tully needs a Calcutta birth certificate at 78, 2013

Life , People , Law , Hope

“I am very proud to have worked with the BBC for 30 years. I had hoped to continue to work for the corporation but that is no longer possible.”

Mark Tully

Source: Peter Victor, " Tully quits BBC http://www.independent.co.uk/news/tully-quits-bbc-1412865.html," The Independent, 10 July 1994

Hope