NEW DELHI, Jan. 30 -- Rajiv Gandhi was somewhere in West Bengal when the Intelligence Bureau alerted him about the assassination of his mother and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. His first impulse was to check the veracity of the report by tuning into the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) radio. He believed the report only when he heard it on the BBC. He flew into New Delhi to be sworn in as Prime Minister.

Mark Tully was the BBC correspondent in New Delhi. He enjoyed a cult status that no other radio journalist ever obtained. I was a regular listener to the morning bulletin of the BBC that had an in-depth analysis of the main event, sometimes with spot interviews. It helped me to attend the editorial conference at the Hindustan Times...