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April 10, 2026
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"You wanted it heavier, faster, more extreme, and of course, you had the speed and thrash metal scene, along comes the early black metal scene, then the death metal scene, and at that point, when I got into death metal, I was 14-15 years old, and I was just learning a few licks on the guitar, and I thought, 'I could do that. I could do 'You Suffer' by Napalm Death.' You didn't necessarily have to be on the right fret, you know, just make noise, that's how it started. I always wanted to be a really good lead guitar player, like Yngwie Malmsteen style, that's what I wanted, but I never practiced, never got there, and nobody else in the band at the time, when I started with my first band, Eruption, nobody wanted to be the singer. And I was, like, 'Well, I guess I'll be the singer.' And then because I couldn't really sing like Celine Dion, you know, I tried to do the screams instead."
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.