First Quote Added
April 10, 2026
Latest Quote Added
"That song [5-3-10-4 from '] really is about how I saw things. I wrote that song when I was still doing the bike messenger grind and you know being down by the stockyards where they would take all the animals and slaughter them; there were a bunch of slaughterhouses down there and there were cows and pigs being frozen and chunks of meat were hanging in trucks, it was such a pinnacle time in my life. … I haven’t eaten meat for something like 17 years. I remember I was eating meat one day and my cat was looking up at me and I thought, ‘Man I wouldn’t eat my cat. What difference would it make if it was a little cat or a cow?’ and it occurred to me that we are all connected and I didn’t want to contribute to that. All the time people around me are eating meat but that is their thing, it is not until they ask that I inform them that I am a vegetarian and it is a big part of who I am."
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.