AHMEDABAD: Achyut Yagnik, a well-known intellectual from Gujarat, passed away at the age of 78 on Friday morning in Ahmedabad. He was the founder and secretary of SETU: Centre for Social Knowledge and Action, a voluntary organisation based in Ahmedabad that has been working with marginalised groups since the early 1980s.
Achyut Yagnik worked as a journalist in Ahmedabad from 1970 to 1980 and was an active member of the Working Journalists Union and Press Workers Union. Following that, he served as the Gujarat Coordinator of the Lokayan Project of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi, as well as the General Secretary of the Gujarat People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL).
He was a renowned thinker, author, visiting faculty member, social worker, journalist, unionist, and activist in a variety of people's movements. He has written several books in Gujarati and English, including "Creating a Nationality: Ramjanmabhoomi Movement and Fear of the Self" (1995). In addition, he is a co-author of “The Making of Modern Gujarat.”
Achyut was also a consultant and Fellow at the United Nations University in Tokyo from 1986 to 1987. He was also the founder editor of the Centre for Social Studies' Gujarati research journal "Arthat" and the Gujarat correspondent of the Economic and Political Weekly.
The distinguished thinker and writer-activist was also a guest faculty at the Post-Graduate Department of Development Communication, at Gujarat University and has given lectures at the Universities of Columbia, Chicago and Berlin.
He is survived by his wife and son Anand Yagnik, a well-known lawyer of the Gujarat High Court.