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April 10, 2026
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"...[T]hat lunatic monster..."
"She was so open and frank... She made space around her, if we just behaved... Everybody seemed to trust this woman and gathered gladly around her."
"He was pretty. His eyes were kind and young. One had to wonder whether he was fourteen years old, or a thousand, being so smooth and untouched. A little boy peered out of the man's face. He was funny... I was bewildered... a man, responsible for the life and death of thousands, and yet there was no trace on him? One could be frightened of less, and yet so harmlessly innocent? Yes, innocent was the word... I knew I would remember this meeting the rest of my life, because I had never before met an emptyness like this."
"This face seemed full of suffering, despair, confusion, so that I became uneasy again... It seemed like tiredness and defeatism spread from him to everyone close by."
"[Capitalism]... is a great troll. It settles in a society, and then eats away silently. Eats more and more freedom, more humanity, more human rights, more ability to speak..."
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.