The Auroville Archives gets its own building

The Auroville Archives is the fifth in the row of Auroville’s administrative buildings, next to the office of the Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research. Designed by architect Sonali, the two-story building ‘breathes’ through many screens or clostras. The ground floor will be used by the Auroville Archives and by Outreach Media, while the utilization of the first floor is still being discussed.

Three and a half years ago, Gilles Guigan took over the management of the Archives from retired Major-General Krishna Tewari, who passed away in September 2016. Without Krishna, he says, the Archives would never have been established. Undaunted by ‘the dungeons of Bharat Nivas’ which housed the Archives for more than 25 years, Krishna had been working hard to collect and maintain the records of our ‘living laboratory’. For him, keeping records was a necessary tool to grasp the deeper dimension of what is happening in Auroville and help researchers uncover the truths of the past, including those aspects we may not like to face. Despite a widespread lack of interest and support, he doggedly pursued his dream of a dedicated Archives building and his wish was finally granted. Dr. Karan Singh laid the foundation stone on October 4th, 2015. The construction of the building took three years at a cost of Rs 2.5 crores (US $ 385,000).

At present, the rooms inside the new building are cluttered with 60 steel cupboards and tables, awaiting the installation of mobile shelving to store the enormous amount of materials that have been collected and are still flowing in. Amongst the most important are copies (and a few originals) of all of The Mother’s messages on Auroville (the originals are in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives); rare materials on the Matrimandir, such as the architectural and technical drawings of the building, the original drawings of Udar, the Matrimandir garden designs of Paolo Tommasi, and the diaries of Ruud Lohman; the files of the struggle with the Sri Aurobindo Society; a comprehensive collection of letters of Satprem written to various Aurovilians; and town planning materials from Roger Anger. Then there are hundreds of written reports, thousands of letters, tens of thousands of photos, hundreds of audio and video tapes and a collection of all the magazines and newsletters published in and about Auroville.

“Many older Aurovilians and people related to Auroville surrender their private archives, some on the condition of confidentiality,” says Gilles. Still lacking are the private archive materials from people who have been close to Auroville in the past, such as Shyam Sunder Jhunjhunwala, who was Mother’s secretary for Auroville in the early days, and from former Governing Board Chairman, Shri Kireet Joshi.

All the material needs to be reorganized. To deal with the enormous amount of work, a new team has come forward. They have big plans, such as the digitalization of all important documents, photos and videos and making them available on the web. The new team is also giving a hard look at the hundreds of copies of brochures and the stacks of News and Notes. “We do not intend to keep more than 2 or 3 hardcopies of any document,” says Gilles.

But it’s not a work he himself will be undertaking. “I’m a researcher,” he says, pointing at his research on the history of Auroville, on its Master Plan, on Matrimandir, and on the background of Auroville’s future centre of higher education.

The Archives still has many surprises. Gilles points at a cupboard. “When we moved, we opened it for the first time in years. It had ‘Joss’ written on it, so we all thought it contained material belonging to Joss. But it didn’t. The cupboard was packed with videos, some infected with fungus, and we still don’t know what’s on them.” The preservation and digitalization of these videos is the job of film makers Doris and Francis who have received a large grant from the 50th anniversary budget for this purpose.

Gilles stresses that the Auroville Archives is not a lending library. It will allow access to researchers, who can get soft copies of documents if available, but no document will be allowed to move out of the Archives.