First Quote Added
April 10, 2026
Latest Quote Added
"I started playing football when I was a very tender age, it was somewhere between 6 or 7 years old."
"Actually by the time I started, I used to play with boys because the academy that I was playing for didn't have the lady's team."
"I just had to get my boots (from home) without them knowing that I'm going to play football because if they know this they won't allow me"
"I would throw them (boots) out the window, then go out the door, and they'd think maybe she's just going outside, and then I'd go round to get them."
"It means a lot for everyone and the country at large. It is encouraging for women, not even the men’s team qualified… we made history."
"The way I used to play in Zambia and how I played in Europe was quite different."
"Each team you play, [it] offers good competition. [Playing in Spain] helped me to improve in so many ways."
"He used to encourage me to practise… he was also in football. He encouraged me by telling me if that is my talent or if I liked it, I should concentrate on it."
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.