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April 10, 2026
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"The outcome of the war depends on the Second Army being victorious on the Somme.... The enemy must be made to pick his way forward over corpses."
"Enemy superiority is so great that we are not in a position either to fix their forces in position or to prevent them from launching an offensive elsewhere. We just do not have the troops.... We cannot prevail in a second battle of the Somme with our men; they cannot achieve that any more."
"I always remember my disappointment the next morning when I found that my hand was still on because I thought, well, if I lost my hand I'm all right, I shall live, they can't send me out without a hand again. I was 20 then, it's not altogether a right thought for a young man to hope that he's been maimed for life."
"Somme. The whole history of the world cannot contain a more ghastly word."
"Then five minutes to go. And then zero hour, and all hell lets loose. There's our barrage, the Germans' barrage, and over the top we go. As soon as you get over the top, fear has left you, and its terror. You don't ... look, you see. You don't hear, you listen. Your nose is filled with fumes and death. You taste the top of your mouth. Your weapon and you are one. A hunter, you're back to the jungle. The veneer of civilization has dropped away. And you see the line of men, the flare of the shells and the mist of dawn, November dawn. And the fumes from the shells coming out of the bursting shell, which gives it a dirty orange colour. Then you see this line. Then a gap, closing, and go on."
"From 1789 to late in 1791 the French Revolution was an orderly process, and from the summer of 1794 the Republic was an orderly and victorious state. The Terror was not the work of the whole country, but of the town mob which owed its existence and its savagery to the misrule, and social injustice of the ancient regime...More lives were wasted by the British generals alone on the opening day of what is known as the Somme offensive of July, 1916 than in the whole French Revolution from start to finish."
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.