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April 10, 2026
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"It was almost like the Holy Spirit was chastising me for the choice that I was taking. That manifested through sleepless nights...I can't explain the feeling. It was like my spirit was rejecting something. I knew but I was running away from it."
"I can't explain how I was feeling but I was at my lowest. And right there and then, I heard this song [by Shirley Caesar titled 'He'll Do It Again] in my mind. I have sung that song so many times but this time the words were louder."
"It went from a few sticks to a pack [of cigarette] then to two packs and it just became my addiction....I was very depressed. The feeling of not fitting into that [secular] space got me depressed."
"I broke down crying...I just realized I had had an encounter with God. I got up and I felt better."
"Throughout my career, Throughout my life, I had always known that I had a calling on my life even when I was doing secular. From a young age, I grew up in church. And both of my parents are pastors and ministers of the gospel. So I was always in the church, but it is not necessarily because I was in church that I had a calling. But then I knew it, and I can’t explain. But during that course when I made a decision to go secular, it was because I didn’t think I could handle the responsibility of being gospel. This is because I was young, and I felt I won’t be able to do it because it was too boring. And I was trying to fit especially being an only child. I felt like if I went gospel, I would be on my own with no friends."
"But during the course of my music career, there was A lot of back and forth, there was a lot of inconsistencies because I was really battling with myself and the calling. It took a lot of grace to finally come to the period of surrender. Even before I surrendered, I went through a lot of depression, addictions and periods of secluding myself. During those periods, I prayed A lot to God. I cried out a lot to God. It went from just leave me alone, God, to do what you want to do. Because I felt that every attack I was having in my music career was because I wasn’t walking in my calling"
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.