First Quote Added
April 10, 2026
Latest Quote Added
"In brief, Princeton is a wealthy, private, research university of high standing with a long history. It is located in a largely affluent suburban community that is home to a number of highly educated people associated with knowledge-intensive institutions such as ETS (Educational Testing Service) and the Institute for Advanced Study, as well as Princeton, Rutgers, and other colleges and secondary schools. The university is residential, operates at a relatively small scale, and is highly selective at both undergraduate and graduate levels. The undergraduate college was all male until it became coeducational in 1969—a change that occurred a few years earlier at the graduate level. It has a famously loyal (some would say "fanatically loyal") alumni body."
"Princeton is a wonderful little spot, a quaint and ceremonious village of puny demigods on stilts... Here the people who compose what is called 'society' enjoy even less freedom than their counterparts in Europe. Yet they seem unaware of this restriction, since their way of life tends to inhibit personality development from childhood."
"Transforming hereditary privilege into ‘merit,’ the existing system of educational selection, with the Big Three [Harvard, Princeton, and Yale] as its capstone, provides the appearance if not the substance of equality of opportunity. In so doing, it legitimates the established order as one that rewards ability over the prerogatives of birth. The problem with a ‘meritocracy,’ then, is not only that its ideals are routinely violated (though that is true), but also that it veils the power relations beneath it. For the definition of ‘merit,’ including the one that now prevails in America’s leading universities, always bears the imprint of the distribution of power in the larger society. Those who are able to define ‘merit’ will almost invariably possess more of it, and those with greater resources—cultural, economic and social—will generally be able to ensure that the educational system will deem their children more meritorious."
"Fields medalists are nothing out of the ordinary at Princeton—you sometimes find yourself seated next to three or four of them at lunch!"
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.