The Voice of the Red River: Sir Mark Tully and the Chronicles of a Silenced Assam

The announcement on January 25, 2026, regarding the passing of Sir William Mark Tully in New Delhi marks more than the end of a distinguished journalistic career; for the people of Assam and the broader Northeast, it signifies the severance of a vital historical artery. Passing away at the age of 90 after a prolonged illness at Max Hospital, Saket, Tully leaves behind a legacy that is inextricably interwoven with the modern political history of India, but perhaps nowhere is his absence felt with such visceral historical weight as in the Brahmaputra Valley. To the global audience, he was the voice of the BBC World Service; to the ‘mainstream Indian’, he was the kindly "Tully Sahib" who loved steam engines and the chaotic charm of Indian democracy.

 However, from the vantage point of a regional media house in Assam, Mark Tully was the witness who refused to blink when the Indian state turned its gaze away. During the tumultuous years of the Assam Agitation (1979–1985), when the region was engulfed in a fire of ethnic assertion and state repression, Mark Tully became the primary validator of reality for the Assamese people. In an era characterized by the monopoly of state-controlled media and a "tyranny of distance" that rendered the Northeast invisible to New Delhi, Tully’s voice on the shortwave radio was not merely news; it was a lifeline of credibility. This report seeks to exhaustively document and analyse the relationship between Mark Tully’s journalism and the Assam Movement, positing that his coverage did not just record the events of the 1980s but actively shaped the region's understanding of itself during its darkest hour.

 To comprehend the magnitude of Mark Tully’s impact on Assam, one must first reconstruct the suffocating information environment of pre-liberalization India. The early 1980s were a period where the "free press" was a relative term, constrained by the hangover of the Emergency and the rigid centralization of the Indira Gandhi regime.

The State Monopoly

The primary sources of information for the vast majority of Indians were All India Radio and Doordarshan, both of which functioned as arms of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting rather than independent public service broadcasters. The ethos of these institutions was governed by a mandate of "national integration," which in practice often meant the suppression of regional dissent that challenged the central narrative.

During the Assam Agitation, the state media apparatus was deployed to delegitimize the movement. The complex anxieties regarding demographic change and illegal immigration were frequently reduced to "anti-national" sentiments or "communalism" in official broadcasts. The disconnect between the "official truth" broadcast from Delhi; which spoke of normalcy and law and order, and the "lived reality" of the Assamese people, characterized by bandhs, curfews, and paramilitary violence; created a profound credibility vacuum. The censorship was not always overt; often, it was a systemic omission, a refusal to acknowledge the scale of the civil disobedience that had paralyzed the oil sector and the administration.

 The Credibility of the "Third Voice"

Into this vacuum stepped the BBC World Service. The technological limitations of the era meant that television coverage was non-existent for such remote conflicts, and the national print media was often viewed with suspicion, seen as echoing the "Delhi Durbar’s" perspective. Mark Tully, operating as the Bureau Chief of the BBC in Delhi, leveraged the medium of radio to bypass the state’s blockade on information.

The "radio ritual" became a defining feature of life in Assam during the agitation. At 8:00 PM, families across the valley would huddle around transistor radios, tuning through the static of the shortwave bands to catch the familiar, baritone opening: "This is London." The trust in Tully was such that rumours were often verified against his reports; if Tully hadn't reported it, it hadn't happened. This phenomenon was rooted in the psychology of the "neutral outsider." Although British by citizenship, Tully’s deep connection to India; born in Tollygunge, Calcutta, in 1935 and his refusal to adopt the condescending tone of the colonial observer endeared him to the local population. He navigated the cultural nuances of the region, understanding that the agitation was not merely a law-and-order problem but a crisis of identity.

The Assam Agitation: A Crisis of Identity and Representation

The Assam Movement, spearheaded by the All Assam Students' Union (AASU) and the All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad (AAGSP), was a six-year struggle (1979–1985) demanding the detection, disenfranchisement, and deportation of illegal foreigners from Bangladesh. The movement was triggered by the discovery of a massive spike in voters in the Mangaldoi parliamentary constituency in 1979, which confirmed the indigenous fear that demographic aggression was altering the political destiny of the state.

The Narrative War

The central government, led by Indira Gandhi, viewed the agitation primarily as a threat to national unity and a disruption to the crucial oil supply from the region’s refineries. The narrative pushed by New Delhi was one of "parochialism" and "chauvinism". National newspapers, often relying on government briefings or reporting from a distance, frequently missed the nuances of the indigenous anxiety.

Mark Tully’s reporting was distinct because he ventured beyond the press releases. He engaged with the student leaders Prafulla Kumar Mahanta and Bhrigu Kumar Phukan; treating them as legitimate political actors rather than mere troublemakers. His reports contextualized the blockades not as acts of sabotage, but as acts of desperation by a people who felt their existence was under threat. By broadcasting the demands of the AASU to a global audience, Tully internationalized the Assam issue, forcing New Delhi to reckon with the reputational cost of its repression.

The 1983 Election: Democracy at Gunpoint

The turning point of the agitation and the focal point of Tully’s coverage was the disastrous decision by the Indira Gandhi government to hold elections in Assam in February 1983, despite a total boycott call by the movement leaders and a breakdown of the electoral rolls.

The government argued that elections were a constitutional necessity. The AASU argued that an election based on a "defective" voter list containing foreign nationals was illegitimate. The result was a collision course that led to widespread violence. The state flooded Assam with paramilitary forces, and the resulting atmosphere was described by Tully not as a democratic exercise, but as an occupation.

Reporting the Unspeakable

The coverage of the 1983 elections remains the most significant chapter in Mark Tully’s engagement with Assam. While the national media was largely corralled or censored, Tully and a handful of colleagues (including Satish Jacob and regional journalists like Hemendra Narayan) travelled into the interior to document the carnage.

The "Bloodstained" Democracy

Tully’s descriptions of the pre-election violence were visceral and forensic. In his seminal work, Amritsar: Mrs. Gandhi's Last Battle, and his dispatches from the time, he detailed the grim reality of the "forced" voting. He recounted finding a bloodstained sack on the Grand Trunk Road containing the mutilated body of a woman, a chilling symbol of the breakdown of law and order. This reporting stood in stark contrast to the official AIR bulletins claiming that "polling was progressing peacefully barring minor incidents".

 Tully exposed the mechanics of the "ghost election," reporting on polling stations where not a single vote was cast, and others where voters were marched in under armed guard. He famously described the situation as a "civil war" rather than an election, a characterization that infuriated the central government but resonated deeply with the terrified populace of the Brahmaputra Valley.

The Nellie Massacre: Breaking the NAM Façade

The darkest moment of the agitation occurred on February 18, 1983, in the village of Nellie in Nagaon district. In a span of six hours, over 2,000 people (unofficial estimates run much higher), primarily Bengali-speaking Muslims, were massacred by mobs armed with traditional weapons.

The timing was critical. The massacre occurred while New Delhi was hosting the 7th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was keen to project India’s image as a global leader of peace and stability. A massacre of this scale would have shattered that diplomatic façade. Consequently, the state machinery imposed a strict information blockade.

Mark Tully, defying the restrictions, managed to reach the massacre site. His report on the BBC World Service was the first to bring the magnitude of the tragedy to the world.

●       The "Frankenstein’s" Insight: Tully’s analysis of Nellie went beyond the immediate violence. He famously remarked that the massacre was the result of the "Frankenstein’s" created by the agitation and the government's mishandling of it. He argued that by forcing an election on a polarized society, the government had ruptured the fragile social fabric, pitting community against community tribals (Tiwa/Lalung) against immigrants, Assamese against Bengalis.

●       The Global Impact: The broadcast of the Nellie story during the NAM summit was a severe embarrassment for the Indian government but a necessary intervention for justice. It forced the international community to look beyond the Lutyens' Delhi glamour to the smoking ruins of Assam. Tully’s reportage relied heavily on the courageous groundwork of local journalists like Sabita Goswami, whose contributions he consistently acknowledged.

Why Tully Sahib Mattered

 The reverence for Mark Tully in Assam cannot be explained solely by the content of his news; it was rooted in the sociology of his presence. In the 1980s, the relationship between the Indian "Centre" and the "Periphery" (Northeast) was one of alienation.

The Assamese psyche, bruised by accusations of being "anti-national," found in Tully a neutral arbiter. When Tully reported on the police firings at Chandmari or the shortage of kerosene due to the blockade, he validated the suffering of the common man. He was neither the "oppressive state" nor the "insurgent." He was the "Third Voice." Despite being a British Knight and a representative of the BBC (a colonial institution), Tully was viewed as anti-establishment in the Indian context because he challenged the narrative of the Congress government. His reporting on the authoritarian tendencies of the Indira and Rajiv Gandhi governments, specifically their centralization of power and erosion of inner-party democracy; aligned with the regionalist critique emanating from Assam.

 The medium of radio created an intimacy that print could not match. The image of the "Tully Sahib" listener; often an elder in a village in Nalbari or Jorhat, tuning in at dusk, is a cultural trope in the region. Tully’s voice, described as "calm, faintly foreign and unmistakably intimate," allowed him to narrate the story of India back to itself. For the isolated population of Assam, listening to the BBC was an act of connecting with the outside world that seemed to have forgotten them.

Mark Tully’s engagement with Assam did not end with the signing of the Assam Accord in 1985. He remained a keen observer of the region’s subsequent descent into insurgency and its eventual uncomfortable peace.

As the Assam Agitation gave way to the armed struggle of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), Tully continued to report on the region’s complexities. He covered the rise of ULFA, the military operations (Operation Bajrang, Operation Rhino), and the human rights violations that accompanied them. His reporting remained nuanced, often highlighting the root causes of the insurgency, the failure of the Assam Accord’s implementation and the continuing economic neglect; rather than dismissing it merely as terrorism.

 The Empty Chair at the Tea Table

The death of Mark Tully is not just the passing of a journalist; it is the fading of a witness who stood by Assam when the lights were turned off. In the contemporary era of 24-hour news channels and social media cacophony, it is difficult to imagine the singular authority that Tully commanded. Today, the media landscape in Assam is vibrant, with portals like The Sentinel, Assam Times, and satellite channels providing continuous coverage. Yet, the credibility deficit that Tully filled in the 1980s remains a relevant lesson for modern journalism.

Mark Tully proved that truthful reporting is the most effective form of empathy. By refusing to look away from the bodies at Nellie, by refusing to parrot the press releases of the Home Ministry, and by listening to the students on the streets of Guwahati, he accorded dignity to the Assamese struggle. He was the "External Conscience" of the Republic.

As the Red River flows on, carrying the sediments of history, the name of "Tully Sahib" will remain etched in the collective memory of the Assam Agitation generation. He was the man who ensured that when Assam cried, the world listened.