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April 10, 2026
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"As I stood in a group near the bar, a Tory MP came over to introduce himself. "What are you doing here?" he asked abruptly, in what I can only assume was an attempt at small talk. "I work with the party’s host," I explained. “What are you doing here?" ... And then he said: "If you work at the Telegraph, do you know that slut who writes that Single Girl About Town column at the back of the magazine? What's her name? Bryony Gordon?" The room seemed to fall silent. "Yes," I managed to respond. "I know her very well, because that slut is me." The new minister for can-you-guess-what blushed crimson and spent the rest of the evening apologising profusely."
"These incidents are only trivial if you compare them to, say, the fact that women MPs are frequently mistaken for researchers, or that there are currently more British male MPs than there have been female ones in the entire history of parliament. And if the men who govern us aren't capable of seeing women as anything other than totty, sluts or dears then what hope do we have of them taking the issues that affect us seriously?"
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.