First Quote Added
April 10, 2026
Latest Quote Added
"We are all shaped by our pasts. And we carry elements of the past into the future. But nothing can threaten the future quite as much as the debts of the past."
"When I was a kid, I would sit on the floor of my house in Mumbai and I would read about the great nations, the great empires. The Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire... they all came and they all went. But I always thought there was one exception to that rule, and that's the United States of America, which is a different kind of empire, if it's an empire at all. It's an empire of ideals."
"Obama himself gives us a big clue in the title of his autobiography. Notice it says "Dreams from My Father", not "Dreams of My Father"."
"[Obama] resolves not to be like his father, but to take his dream. Where the father failed, he will succeed. In doing so, perhaps he can become worthy of his father's love, the love he never got."
"[Obama] is then chosen as the fulfillment of the Civil Rights Movement. This insecure kid who grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia, whose life is shaped by his father's ghost, and whose ideology could not be more directly remote from what Americans believe or care about, is now the President of the United States."
"Only through the dreams of Obama's father can we understand the actions of the son."
"The world could be a pretty scary place in 2016... Israel brought to its knees, the Muslim world united. But America would still be a rich country. How does Obama change that? How does he restore the world before colonialism? Actually, there is a way, and it's a beautiful way. I call it "debt as a weapon of mass destruction.""
"The first time, we did not know what change would look like. Now we do. The first time, we did not know Barack Obama. Now we do. Which dream will we carry into 2016? The American dream or Obama's dream? The future is not in my hands. It's not even in Obama's hands. The future is in your hands."
Young though he was, his radiant energy produced such an impression of absolute reliability that Hedgewar made him the first sarkaryavah, or general secretary, of the RSS.
- Gopal Mukund Huddar
Largely because of the influence of communists in London, Huddar's conversion into an enthusiastic supporter of the fight against fascism was quick and smooth. The ease with which he crossed from one worldview to another betrays the fact that he had not properly understood the world he had grown in.
Huddar would have been 101 now had he been alive. But then centenaries are not celebrated only to register how old so and so would have been and when. They are usually celebrated to explore how much poorer our lives are without them. Maharashtrian public life is poorer without him. It is poorer for not having made the effort to recall an extraordinary life.
I regret I was not there to listen to Balaji Huddar's speech [...] No matter how many times you listen to him, his speeches are so delightful that you feel like listening to them again and again.
By the time he came out of Franco's prison, Huddar had relinquished many of his old ideas. He displayed a worldview completely different from that of the RSS, even though he continued to remain deferential to Hedgewar and maintained a personal relationship with him.