Goodbye Dr. Karan Singh

Address of Dr Karan Singh

As I come to the end of my fifth term as Chairman of the Auroville Foundation, I would like to address all Aurovilians. 

Let me first congratulate you with three miracles that you have performed. The first was the environmental miracle, the way the early Aurovilians converted a dry desert into a flourishing green oasis with lakhs of plants and flowers and trees. It has been extraordinary, a world class environmental achievement. 

The second is an architectural miracle, the construction of the Matrimandir. I remember when I first became Chairman, there was only a skeleton; I saw it coming up, how the whole building developed. It was extraordinary how this remarkable structure was built by the Aurovilians themselves. You did all the work and raised all the money. And therefore this miracle, too, goes to your credit.

The third is the sociological miracle, the fact that people from a 59 different countries live together in harmony for 50 years. That itself is a miracle. We have situations in India where people from different communities clash with one another, but in Auroville you have people from all these different countries with their own cultures and languages and backgrounds, who all live together peacefully. There is the occasional ruckus, but that is very small compared to the fact that you have been living and working together as a community for half a century. That is a sociological miracle.

So let me first congratulate the Aurovilians on the world class environmental miracle, the world class architectural miracle, and the world class sociological miracle. 

Being Chairman of the Auroville Foundation has been a great learning experience for me because Auroville is an unique attempt. The Auroville Foundation Act was passed in 1988, but the first appointment with me as Chairman was in 1992. So through all these decades I have seen how Auroville has grown and how so many excellent institutions have come to fruition. I have also communicated with many Aurovilians directly, not through the bureaucracy, and apart from the formal communication with the Working Committee. I have been sending many ‘dear Aurovilian’ letters, which have been published in a book by Aryadeep and Basu. That shows my direct communication with individual members of the community, one to one. That is what I’ve always cherished.

This is such a talented community, it is quite extraordinary. There is so much talent in Auroville. I think we reached our peak at the golden jubilee where, at my invitation, India’s Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi came to Auroville and addressed us. We had a tremendous golden jubilee with happenings in Auroville as well as functions in New Delhi, Baroda, Calcutta and Chennai.

But of course, after peaks there are always valleys, and soon thereafter all kinds of problems arose, showing that there is a lot of work to do. Now we have to look at our weaknesses. One of them is how we are going to build the city when we do not own all the land and we don’t have an organisational structure that can build it. 

We have to think of a way to get all the lands. I would stress to first buy all lands within the city area. We get also donations for buying land in the greenbelt, which is important. But all the land in the Greenbelt will never fully be owned by Auroville, whereas the city area has got to be owned by Auroville. So I suggest that whatever donations we can raise, go for purchase of land in the city area, so that that can be completed.

Regarding building the city, I am afraid that Auroville’s Town Development Council (TDC) is not equipped to tackle the immensity of the problem. This is also due to the fact that your procedures for choosing the members of various committees are extremely long. It is ridiculous that a vacancy takes ten months to fill. What sort of organisation is it when a working group such as the TDC needs seven members and has only two? You can’t function like this; the Residents Assembly has to become more active and you have to speed up your processes. The Auroville processes have to keep up with the times, you cannot have a 19th century process in the 21st century. Taking into account what The Mother and Sri Aurobindo have said, Auroville has to speed up its processes. 

But how do we build the city? That is the fourth miracle that you have to perform. The city is not going to be built by the Auroville Foundation, but by the Aurovilians. And therefore individual Aurovilians may have to make sacrifices, get over their individual interests and accept that a road or a high tension line goes through their house or the property they are stewarding. That is your main challenge ahead.

I take leave of you with my very warm and affectionate congratulations, and wish you all the best in the future. My good wishes and affectionate support will always remain with Auroville. 

I bow to Sri Aurobindo and The Mother.