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 • Hello and welcome to Walk The talk. My guest this week is a legend of our times, Sir Mark Tully. Welcome to Walk The Talk.

I don’t like to think of myself as a legend. Legend are things which are over.

• I could have called you the Knight of Nizamuddin East.

Well, I have been very lucky in my life. I put most of it down to luck, actually.

• Good timing. I mean what’s a journalist without good timing?

Yeah, timing. A little bit of timing.

• Timing, instinct. All those things matter.

They do, but luck also matters a lot.

• And intellect helps.

Well, maybe I don’t know. I don’t think journalists have great intellect.

• But look at the book you have produced now. That is an intellectual/spiritual/ political exercise: India’s Unending Journey.

Well, it’s an exercise I am very nervous about, because it’s far more personal than any book I have ever written before. And I honestly did not know what the reaction to it would be. I actually thought somebody would say Mark Tully is not barmy; Mark Tully has become a religious maniac.

• I have heard people say Mark Tully has finally shown his Hindu side. Some people say Mark Tully has finally given evidence in writing that he is an unreconstructed socialist. Which one do you buy?

You know this is an interesting thing. There’s a quote in the book from Dr Manmohan Singh where he says if you advocate the middle world, and the whole book is about advocating the middle world. It’s about not being devoted to Hindutva, but equally not being so secularist that you despise religion. And what Manmohan Singh said is that if you pursue the middle world, you are bound to get hit from the left and from the right. And actually I haven’t been hit from the left.

• But usually that’s how you drive on an Indian road.

I hope not to get hit when I drive on Indian roads.

• So Mark, back to the book. Is this the spiritual side to you? We know that you started out by being educated to be a theologian.

Yes, I did start out to be a priest in the Church of England and, I believe like you, had a pretty rough life as a journalist. It’s a rough and tough life.

• Spirituality and hacks don’t always go together. It reminds me of Wellington’s line about his army: “I think gin is the spirit of their patriotism.”

I am sure. I’ve done my bit... bars and things like that. Last thing I believe in is that spirituality should be any form of killjoy or anything like that. And I dislike excessive Puritanism, especially the sort of Puritanism you sometimes see in this country. I think it is deplorable in part for it actually denigrates religion, and makes you think religion is stupid.

• And your teachers figured you out early on that you weren’t the right candidate. Tell us what happened? Were you going to the pub too often.

No, in a church you preach from the pulpit. So the Bishop of Lincoln said to me: “I think Mark your place is more in the public house that in the pulpit.”

• You don’t think of what you missed out on.

I do, sometimes. You know I drifted into journalism.

• Is this nostalgia for your early years? Or is it distillation of your years in India?

It’s not really nostalgia but there is an element of nostalgia in it. As I say in the book, I have a deep love for the liturgy of the Anglican Church. Just as you might have a deep love for the worship in Golden Temple, which you attended when you were young. One reason I wrote this book is that when we were young we were taught that Christianity was the only way to God. But living in India has taught me that there are other ways to God as well. It has changed me radically.

• You know Mark, during our reporting years, you have seen these same gods turn against people of India, turn against some people of India, turn against the Government of India. You have seen a lot of problem in the name of religion.

Yes, I have.

• Now, we see the whole Bangalore business...

Yes, but you know whenever we saw the trouble, firstly there almost always was politics behind it. It was politicians who were stirring it up. We know the history behind the Bhindranwale movement and who actually stirred the whole thing up. Secondly, these things are never entirely religious. They get clothed in religious clothes but there is usually economics behind it, language behind it, quite often ethnicity behind it as well. Finally, Islam. I didn’t exactly mean Islam...but we do need to think what it is which persuades these people to do these dreadful things.

• Britain now seems to have a serious problem ... the epicentre of this tension.

Oh yes, Britain has a serious problem. One of the reasons it has a serious problem is because of the Iraq War. But the other reason is because there are Muslims who genuinely feel there is an attempt basically by the West to dominate the world and they feel this culture and civilization has no respect for God. And often they see it as obscene the way women are portrayed and treated.

• It’s very interesting given the fact that America now is more religious than it was may be about two decades back. There are more people going to church than before.