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April 10, 2026
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"When I began to teach children, I saw surrounding me that even those children who have parents need to go to school. If I begin to help only orphans go to school, then tomorrow it’s another social conflict. Then I changed; I said, “No, it’s not the correct way."
"There were rumblings of trouble for months and years of tension between Hutus and Tutsis that made little sense to me. But on a terrible day in October 1993, after the presidents of Burundi and Rwanda died in a plane crash and chaos erupted, I was with my seven children, and in an atmosphere of fear and killing and panic I sought safety. Many people were fleeing the killers and the army. I took refuge in the Archbishop of Ruyigi's quarters. However, the rebels got into the compound, and I hid the children in cupboards in the sanctuary of the church. The hordes of invaders killed over 70 people there. They demanded that I tell them where my children were, but when I refused they hesitated, not willing to kill me because they saw me as a Tutsi. They tied me to a chair and stripped me naked. My best friend was beheaded and they threw her head on my lap.."
"Everyone said, “She is crazy.” I found enough energy and love to share and to ignore or work to change the too many stupid things in the way to what was needed and what was right. But I want to stress that in all these years it was not just Maggie who built. I have friends, like Aline and Catherine, who also became crazy and who have worked with me."
"When you suffer so much, when you watch your brothers killing your other brothers -- Because I am Christian. When you see a mom dying and you are not able to save her, then you think, “And I am Christian!” I said, “God created us, gave us, with our baptism, with our communion, strength with that."
"I said, “Tomorrow, another war will begin, because the people are not together. I’ll build a cinema, and then they can talk together; they can watch movies together."
"I said, “That’s how to give opportunities to dream to those people who suffered so much from the war.” And I put in a swimming pool."
"The solution will come with Africans themselves."
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.