Mark Tully Quotes

17 Sourced Quotes

England struck me as a very miserable place, dark and drab, without the bright skies of India.

Mark Tully
I am amazed that Roli Books should publish such thinly disguised plagiarism, and allow the author to hide in a cavalier manner behind a nom-de-plume. The book is clearly modelled on my career, even down to the name of the main character. That character's journalism is abysmal, and his views on Hindutva and Hinduism do not in any way reflect mine. I would disagree with them profoundly.

Mark Tully
Though I was born in India (Kolkata), I was taught how not to become an Indian.

Mark Tully
There is hope: in a fiercely independent Supreme court, a crusading free press and an absolute commitment to representative democracy. It's time to slip those last reins of rundown colonial institutions.

Mark Tully
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
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
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
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
I hate to lose my connection with the great city of Calcutta.

Mark Tully
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
I just knew I could not trust my sexuality to behave as a Christian priest should, And I didn't want to be a cause of scandal.

Mark Tully
Hinduism can survive modern times if only the people learn to bend with the wind. People will have to find a balance between the new and the old.

Mark Tully
I remember, too, the kudos being born in Calcutta gave me by making me stand-out as a rarity when, at the age of 10, I found myself in the highly competitive society of a British boarding school. To boost my kudos even further, I would boast that I was born in the Second City of the British Empire.

Mark Tully
It is not too difficult to find people in that country [Ireland] crying over what they have lost.

Mark Tully
There are many arguments about the role of religion in the history of this country. But the fundamental fact still remains that India has been a historic home to all the great religions of the world. I believe this pluralism and this ability to have an individual element in your religion is culturally specific to India... I came to India as an orthodox Christian thinking there was only one way to God. I now believe there are many ways to God and that came from living in India.

Mark Tully
There is blind secularism in this country [India]. If anyone speaks about Hinduism in this country, they are branded as Hindu fundamentalists.

Mark Tully
It struck me that a sense of uncertainty about ways of reaching God is what makes Hinduism different. Because of its ability to adapt, so many faiths could thrive here.

Mark Tully