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April 10, 2026
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"I mean, I’m middle class. I’m upwardly mobile. I’m not a communist; I’m not a socialist. But when I visit the prisons, when I see the new homelessness in L.A., when I see a declining middle class and the growing Occupy movement in a rich-get-richer America, I find that the remnants of colonialism are alive and well. In the barrios, on the reservations, and certainly in parts of the Sonoran desert on the American side…"
"We thought that would be fun to honor the people that do the mundane daily chores, the people that are part of the work service backbone of places like Los Angeles and Orange County…So much effort is made to vilify [these people]."
"Luis Valdez said it long ago: The beauty and the frustration of theater is it is one permanent long shot…You never get up close in someone’s eyes. And that kind of blew me away (while shooting) a close-up. That was all new storytelling for me, and I had to figure it out on a very fast learning curve."
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.