First Quote Added
April 10, 2026
Latest Quote Added
"Let us consider a navigator's manual, published by INSA in 1998 to throw light on "traditional" navigational methods in the Lakshadweep islands. Like so many Arabic navigation manuals, this manual too is attributed to Ibn Majid, the most famous of Arab navigators, who lived in the 15th c. However, it contains updated information found in British sailing manuals of the 19th c. CE. The natural interpretation is that the attribution to Ibn Majid is nominal and symbolic, that the manual has been propagated accretively, motivated by the navigator's life-and-death concern to have the best possible knowledge, and hence the manual has borrowed also from British sailing manuals of the 19th c. It would be laughable to assert that the manual is due to Ibn Majid who had anticipated all this knowledge which was somehow transmitted to the British sailing manuals of the late 19th c. CE."
"We came down on them like a flood, We went out among their cities, We tore down the idol-temples, We shat on the Buddha's head!"
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.