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April 10, 2026
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"For as concerning football playing, I protest unto you it may rather be called a freendly kinde of fight, then a play or recreation; A bloody and murthering practise, then a felowly sporte or pastime. For dooth not every one lye in waight for his adversarie, seeking to overthrowe him & to picke him on his nose, though it be uppon hard stones? In ditch or dale, in valley or hil, or what place soever it be, hee careth not, so he have him down. And he that can serve the most of this fashion, he is counted the only felow, and who but he? So that by this meanes, sometimes their necks are broken, sometimes their backs, sometime their legs, sometime their armes; sometime one part thurst out of joynt, sometime an other; sometime the noses gush out with blood, sometime their eies start out; and sometimes hurt in one place, sometimes in another. But whosoever escapeth away the best, goeth not scotfree, but is either sore wounded, craised, and bruseed, so as he dyeth of it, or els scapeth very hardly. And no mervaile, for they have the sleights to meet one betwixt two, to dashe him against the hart with their elbowes, to hit him under the short ribbes with their griped fists, and with their knees to catch him upon the hip, and to pick him on his nec, with a hundered such murdering devices: and hereof groweth envie, malice, rancour, cholor, hatred, displeasure, enmitie, and what not els: and sometimes fighting, brawling, contention, quarrel picking, murther, homicide, and great effusion of blood, as experience dayly teacheth."
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.