Chunilal Vaidya
Chunilal Vaidya, popularly known as Chunikaka, was an Indian activist, writer, and Gandhian from Gujarat. He was born on 2 September 1917 in a village in Patan district. He took part in India's independence movement and later joined Vinoba Bhave's Bhoodan Movement.
Vaidya worked for peace in Assam during the violence of the 1960s. He edited the magazine Bhumiputra and opposed Indira Gandhi's Emergency in 1975, for which he was imprisoned. In 1980, he founded Gujarat Lok Samiti, a voluntary organization. During the drought years of 1986–1988 in Gujarat, he led relief work and built check dams in Patan district, irrigating about 12,000 hectares of land.
He was critical of the 2002 Gujarat violence. Vaidya wrote the book Assassination of Gandhi: Facts and Falsehood, which was translated into 11 languages.
Chunilal Vaidya died on 19 December 2014 in Ahmedabad at the age of 97. He was cremated at the Dadhichi crematorium in the Vadaj area of the city. He received several awards, including the Sane Guruji Nirbhay Patrakarita Award for journalism, the Vishva Gujarati Pratibha award from Vishva Gujarati Samaj, and the Jamnalal Bajaj Award in 2010.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 22:58 (CET).