Journalists From England

"”Only the superficial do not judge by appearances," Wilde had said, mocking at society; and he had been right. Life was a sham, a mass of muddled evolutions; the world was too slack to find out the truth, or perhaps it was afraid to discover it. For the truth was not pleasant. Gordon did not know what it was; all he saw was that life was built of shams, that no one worshipped anything but the god of things that seem. He lay supine, cursing at the darkness."

"In Russia love was regarded with suspicion as a deterrent to the social obligations of the Soviet citizen."

"A good deal of fun is involved in the launching of a . It is exciting to see one's name placarded all over London; there was a bigger space for posters in the front of then. Bus after bus announced my story."

"There comes some time an end to all things, to the good and to the bad."

"... I am not a very serious person. I am a storyteller and an entertainer, the direct descendant of those wandering s who in the Middle Ages were classified as rogues and vagabonds. The stock of the status of the novelist may have gone up in recent years, and there are a number of novelists who seem to claim a position of a prophet, a leader, an advisor, one of the unacknowledged legislators of mankind, but I think when one comes to the last analysis, that our ancestor is rather than , ... and I myself certainly think of myself and my brother storytellers not so much as leaders of men into action as the idle singers of an empty day"

"... Maugham would not have been the writer he became had his marriage been a success. Nor would Evelyn. He made his first trip to in the autumn of 1930; for six years he was on the move. Until his marriage had been annulled he could not remarry. Those six years of travel gave him the material he needed. He could not have taken a wife upon those travels, certainly not , who was delicate in health. A novelist to get the material he needs must travel alone or with another man. Had the Evelyns’ marriage been a success, he would, with his absorption in the world of fashion, have concentrated on social satires that might well have become brittle and superficial. Did She-Evelyn subconsciously realize that? Her marriage to was short-lived, but she was genuinely in love with him at the beginning. Would she, though, have been prepared to let herself fall in love with him — there is always a point at which one can draw back — had she not felt that since the success of Decline and Fall she was cast in the wrong role? The “he-Evelyn, she- Evelyn, ‘Orphans of the Storm’ Idyll” had been one thing; it was quite another to be the wife, companion, confidante, counselor, and bastion of a great man of letters — the role that Laura Herbert was to fill later, so gladly, so proudly, so lovingly, and with so triumphant a success."

"My friends used to wonder how I could afford to do so much travelling. But actually travel was an economy for me. I did not have to indulge in costly entertaining. My social life was provided by the ships in which I travelled, and in the islands that I visited I was a guest more often than often than a host. I never during 1951 had a substantial credit balance at my bank more than once I received one of those notes so typical of English banking, 'Your account appears to be £23. 11.6. We shall be glad to received your instructions in this matter.' But I was never insolvent."

"Although he came to the United States frequently and for several decades lived part of each year at the in New York, Mr. Waugh was not particularly famous in this country, except for the 1956 Island in the Sun. The colorful story of love, murder and political intrigue on the imaginary Caribbean island of Santa Maria was a book-club selection, was condensed in and was sold to the movies for a that starred , , , and ."

"I had reached shortly after breakfast. Letters of introduction had gone ahead of me, and within three hours I was sipping a very dry martini on the balcony of a bungalow situated on the far side of the mountain range that divides the island. A thousand feet below me 'the bright blue meadow a bay' washed in varying shades of green and turquoise against a long . Beyond it stretched an archipelago of islands, some British, some American, some a bare grazing ground for goats."

"are not a profitable form of writing; their sale is usually small but they have for the author the satisfaction of possessing reference value. They hold their place on library shelves and are consulted by the student and the traveller long after novels that enjoyed a brief bright summer are utterly forgotten, I do not suppose that it would pay a publisher to reissue today 's English in the West Indies, 's Cradle of the Deep, or 's If Crab No Walk, but those three books provide indispensable research material. It is of value to learn how certain places struck people twenty, fifty, eighty years ago."

"I returned to civilian life, agreeing with , that the first duty of a wine was to be red, adding my own corollary that its second duty was to be ."

"To the as to the Arabs, a sleek, well-fed appearance was something to be proud of, a proof of prosperity and success. It was assumed that any man who could afford to would "do himself well." A thin man was either unhealthy or poor—both of which were crimes in the 1870s."

"I am prepared to believe that a slightly impairs the palate, but think what it does to the soul."

"As military regulations state that it is the duty of every to make immediate and strenuous effort to escape, and as every man is at heart an adventurer, it is not surprising that our languid community was from time to time regaled by the rumours of impending sorties."

"Mark Tully may also have wanted to atone for his coverage of South Asia. I remember when we were both reporting on the Valley of Kashmir in the early nineties, that he would always highlight human right abuses on Muslims by the army, but hardly ever spoke about the 400.000 Kashmiri Hindus who were chased out of their ancestral homeland by threats, violence, rapes, torture and murder – and today have become refugees in their own countries... Many of us know that since the mid-eighties Pakistan encouraged, financed, trained and armed Kashmiri separatism. But Mark always made it a point to say: "India accuses Pakistan to foster separatism in Kashmir"; or :"elections are being held in Indian- held Kashmir"; or "Kashmir militants" have attacked an army post, instead of "terrorists"."

"I want to recall here my days as a young journalist covering Kashmir because I faced the same incomprehension that sometimes bordered on contempt in my reporting. At that time, the BBC was the Queen, so to say, of all media, because television was still in its infancy here and radio remained, for both the public and us journalists, the best and fastest means to keep abreast of the news. Mark Tully was then the South Asia Chief of Bureau of BBC — he was worshipped by Indian and Western journalists alike, and his word was gospel. From 1989, when the first Hindu public figures of the Valley of Kashmir were getting murdered by what was then the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), such as the director of Doordarshan, Lassa Kaul, and Satish Tikoo, people whom I had interviewed earlier, till the first elections in Kashmir in 2000, the Indian government was accusing Pakistan of training, arming, and financing the Indian Kashmiri militants, and sending them back across the border to create havoc in India. Mark Tully, ironically, accused the Indian government of lying and denied that the Pakistani government had a hand in Kashmir's terror saga. ...I was there, it touched me immensely and opened my eyes to what a monotheist and intolerant religious worldview could do to other people. What bothered me most was that Western journalists, led by Mark Tully, followed by Indian reporters, only highlighted the so-called human rights violations committed by the Indian Army and paramilitary forces on Muslims of Kashmir, but kept quiet on the ethnic cleansing of Hindus — as if they were responsible for their persecution."

"During his career he has covered several assassinations, the 1971 war between India and Pakistan and the horrors of the Bhopal gas leak in which thousands were killed."

"His understanding of all things Indian did not happen by accident. Mark Tully was born in Calcutta in 1936. The son of a wealthy accountant, he was brought up by a strict European nanny and did not come to Britain until he was ten."

"Mark Tully's private life is complicated. In Delhi, he stays with his girlfriend, Gillian Wright, while in London he stays with his wife, and mother of his four children, Margaret. He has presented a BBC television series, "The Lives of Jesus", using India, as well as the Holy Land, to explain the mysteries of Christ's divinity."

"Migrant workers, dismissed by employers, enjoying no protection from their governments, often thrown out of their accommodation by their landlords, in urgent need of food, transport and money, driven by desperation to walk home. It is a scene many have described as reminiscent of the migration at Partition. This is the outcome of the largest and one of the strictest lockdowns in the world enforced during the coronavirus disease crisis — a lockdown that has been widely applauded internationally. Why has the outcry against this suffering inflicted on men and women who are more than 90% of India’s workforce been so muted? It is, I believe, in part at least, because those in a position to raise their voices have not identified themselves with those who are suffering."

"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"."

"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."

"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."

"Few foreigners manage to get under the skin of the world's biggest democracy the way he does, and fewer still can write about it with the clarity and insight he brings to all his work."

"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."

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

"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."

"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 is well-known as a thoroughly decent gentleman and one of the finest journalists ever posted to India. This is a badly-written book which should never have passed a lawyer or a publisher. It totally misrepresents his personal life and his work."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"I had rather thought I was yesterday's man."

"It was the promotion of the ancient Indian tradition of religious tolerance, a tolerance which owes so much to Hinduism's own pluralism. .. This tradition provides a basis for Hindus and for Indians who believe in many of the many other religions of this country to live with self-respect, in peace, and proud of their national identity. This is very much an Indian tradition, a tradition, which is very different too from the tradition of countries where Semitic religions like Christianity and Islam have dominated. It is the tradition which could meet the needs of so many other countries in the world."

"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."

"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."

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

"Whenever I go and give a talk on Hinduism, and when I say something nice about it, invariably someone from the audience will object: "I think Hinduism is a disgusting religion because of the caste system.""

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

"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."

"Architects and engineers are among the most fortunate of men since they build their own monuments with public consent, public approval and often public money."

"I'm still very skeptical about the whole thing. The Laboratory (Châtenay-Malabry) is unscrupulous to say the least, because they shouldn't know the sample they're testing.” The fact that the lab knew whose sample it was testing is just one of the “anomolies” It's time for the second test, the so-called “B” sample, be done in a second country by a second lab. I'm not saying the lab is a crooked lab, they have proved to us that they're not a particularly scrupulous lab. I got a feeling he's not telling lies."

"Again I come back, why is USADA which is really a nefarious locals drugs agency in the United States so intent? Now I can tell you one thing. And I could prove it in SA but I, I went to, I met a chap who worked with Armstrong, err, on Saturday in Boulder Colorado. And he told me that he had a visit, two years ago, err to tell, and the question was, they were agents from a particular agency and, er, they said “will you tell us that Lance Armstrong took EPO? And we could assure that you will never want for money again“. That was his quote on Thursday and he told them in words I can’t put on radio what to do with that and they said “I think we’re talking to the wrong man” and they walked away."

"He told me in a private situation, when I wasn’t working as a journalist. I was sat in the bedroom some years ago, and I asked him point blank, ‘look Lance, the way I talked you up on television, I would have to back off and resign if you one day went positive’. And he looked at me and he said ‘man I’ve seen death in the face and I don’t take drugs.’ And that’s all he said. I have no reason to disbelieve him."

"Hello, good evening and welcome."

"Seriously, though, he's doing a grand job!"

"Having one child makes you a parent; having two makes you a referee."