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April 10, 2026
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"Rawalpindi, twenty miles away, was the older city. In one direction it sprawled towards Islamabad; but in the centre little had changed. In the bazaar there were still the high, dark-timbered, verandahed and latticed houses of the Sikhs and Hindus who had predominated in the little town before partition and had then been displaced. The old British Rawalpindi club was still in business—the ceiling lights a little dimmer, the walls a muddier yellow, the uniforms of the waiters a little grubbier, the atmosphere at mealtimes more highly spiced."
"The British had ruled here for under a hundred years, and more than thirty years had passed since they had left, but old Rawalpindi remained a town of British India: in the Mall, a street of hotels and gardens; in some of its old-fashioned shops on the Kashmir Road; in its military and administrative residences."
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.