First Quote Added
April 10, 2026
Latest Quote Added
"I knew that I wanted something different. So, instead of focusing on being intimidated, I focused on education. I focused on going to school and making sure I stayed there."
"If you want to get married, you can get married. You have to choose to whom you get married and when the right time is. Marriage is a lot of work. But there is no pressure, the time will come, and there are a lot of men out there!"
"But when you give a girl an opportunity, she will never, ever embarrass you or let you down."
"I could've easily given up but I didn't. All my breakdowns are breakthroughs. I believe I need them in order to push through."
"I wanted to continue with school because my mother was denied an education and she always told us if she went to school she would have been a different person, so I talked to my dad and told him I can only go through the genital mutilation if he lets me go back to school."
"I went through the genital mutilation not knowing what it was."
"I was told it's what will make me a woman. I didn't know that it's something that is done very... it's horrible, you are cut, your genitalia is cut, no anesthesia, you bleed and some people die out of it."
"I'm lucky, I only fainted and came back to life."
"My education has enabled me to learn about it and now I stand against it and stand so that no other girl can go through that."
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.