First Quote Added
April 10, 2026
Latest Quote Added
"[to Albert]: You dirty old man!"
": [looking at old newspapers] 'Ere, I remember this — 'Mussolini invades Albania. King Zog flees.' : That's nothing mate, we got king-size fleas here!"
"[to Albert]: Ain’t it pathetic, your faith in the healing powers of a cup of tea! The Englishman’s panacea! Mother just died? Oh what a shame, have a cup of tea. Just been run over? Never mind, have a cup of tea. I have been offered tea for disasters, funerals, operations, floods, wars, Dunkirk, the Blitz, coronations, piles, hysteria, hunger marches and insomnia. Nice cup of tea in one hand and thumbs up to the camera in the other... Britain can take it! Well they can have it."
"[to Albert]: That wasn’t a lobster that poisoned you, you swallowed your own venom."
": When I’ve got my decent clobber on I’m completely classless. Providing I don’t open my mouth I could pass for anybody."
": There's no need in this day and age for you to 'ang on to other peoples' rags. There's people that need it more than you do, people who really need it. Send it to the Oxford Famine Relief. : Oxford? Bah. There ain't no famine up there. I passed through Oxford; it looked alright to me. : No, it's the 'War on Want' mob. They send it out to Africa and places like that. : They don't wear riding breeches out there. Never seen a blackie in riding breeches: make their legs sweat... Better off than we are. I wish I was a blackie sometimes. All that sun, bananas growin' on trees, coconuts — marvellous life."
": Wedgewood blue on the ceiling... Etruscan red for the woodwork... : Bleedin' awful — it'll look like a Peruvian brothel!"
": You are a dyed-in-the-wool fascist, reactionary, squalid little 'know your place, don't rise above yourself, don't get out of your hole' complacent little turd! : I— : I haven't finished yet! You are morally, spiritually and physically a festering, fly-blown heap of accumulated filth! : What do you want for your tea?"
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.