Village Heritage Festival and So Much More

On the weekend of Mother’s birthday, February 21-22, the Puducherry Village Heritage Festival was held in the neighbouring village of Alankuppam. Just one week prior, the Director of the Tourism Department of the Puducherry Government approached the Mohanam Cultural Centre organizers who had proposed to organize the festival and gave them a green light. Government officials knew of Mohanam’s past work, and were confident it could prepare and execute a successful festival in such a short time period. The result proved the Government right. The two-day festival involved three villages within the Puducherry district: Alankuppam, Sanjeevi Nagar and Annai Nagar, and included art exhibitions, folk and classical performances, as well as traditional games, such as Ilavattakal Thukuthal (lifting a heavy stone) and Pallanghuzi (played on a board with pits). Over 14 different food stalls kept the crowds fed with traditional foods, and the 16 craft stalls sold one lakh worth of products in two days. The festival also brought together three panchayats in cooperation, a rare feat. According to the organizers, over 500 people attended the event, and its success was covered in a national newspaper.

The festival’s success brought praise and attention to the work of Mohanam Cultural Centre, but organizers say that it was neither the beginning nor the end of their work. The festival was one of a series of projects they had undertaken in the past 15 years to build a bridge between Auroville’s northern neighbouring villages and the township. The activities range from self-help groups for village women to water purification projects.

Building connections

Mohanam Cultural Centre, which celebrates its 15th birthday this June, was originally created by a team of young men who wanted to create a meeting point in the villages that would bridge what is happening in Auroville and the villages. The current team consists of four Aurovilians, Balu, Rajaveni, Yuval and Walter, as well as numerous teachers and volunteers. It has its centre in Sanjeevi Nagar village and offers numerous activities, including dance, summer camps, music and art classes for village youth, as well as a kindergarten and women’s groups. For visitors, they offer cooking classes as well as village tours, in association with the Lively One Village Project, which supports and promotes artisans from Sanjeevi Nagar and Alankuppam villages. Many of these artisans have learned specific crafts by working for Auroville units, such as pottery, natural soap-making, or hammock-making, and then branched out on their own.The Mohanam team has drafted an “Auroville Bio-Region Handbook” which describes in detail over 50 villages in the bioregion, as well as a map and brochure of Sanjeevi Nagar and Alankuppam villages. Mohanam organizers were also instrumental in facilitating the implementation of a water purification project in the village of Sanjeevi Nagar, in collaborationa with a local women’s self-help group and an NGO from Holland.

Research projects

The Auroville Bamboo Research Centre, started in 2009, is another project undertaken by Balu, which now houses a flourishing campus dedicated to research in bamboo in all of its forms: as clothing, construction, food, jewellery-making and more. The Bamboo Centre frequently hosts student groups, both international and from within the country, such as a recent group of students from Bombay. The groups come and engage in intensive bamboo construction workshops in which they often build a structure on-site. Additionally, the Bamboo Centre trains and develops skills for the local population, so as to promote local livelihoods. Last year, the Bamboo Centre hosted 1300 people coming for workshops, had roughly 10 volunteers, and employed 35 locals. It is a little-known, but buzzing corner of Auroville.

It’s also a corner that is expanding with the Mangalam project, in which WELL Paper, AVdzines, and Bamboo Research Centre are collaborating. This consortium of units is sharing space, as well as water and other resources, and slowly building up a campus for research.

At the heart of all of Balu’s activities is the deep aspiration to build bridges between Auroville and the villages, specifically through art, music, and culture. “Cultural activities can be used as a bridge to bring people together as a community,” Balu says. He also believes that the youth in both Auroville and the village communities are a critical starting point in this dream, and he hopes to increase the interactions between both youth communities in future. “The youth of the village need to understand the dream of Auroville,” says Balu, “and to understand that they live in a special place”.

Balu is one to know, as his own life bridges these worlds. Now he, his wife and child are all integrated within Auroville but still straddle worlds, making him see the importance of building the bridge. Others on the Mohanam team value what he brings. “Only if you come from this region can you fully understand the intricacies of all of the issues involved,” says Yuval.

Creating connections

The goal to build connections with the villages is increasingly being recognized outside of Auroville, most notably within the Government of Puducherry’s recent move to develop rural tourism opportunities. The Mohanam team has been in dialogue with the Government of Puducherry since 2003 and there has been some occasional collaboration, such as the recent Village Heritage Festival. The biggest example of this collaboration is the Government’s recent request to Mohanam organizers to create a village museum and artisans’ gallery. In a joint collaboration between the Puducherry government, an NGO from Ille-et-Vilaine in the Brittany region of France, and the Mohanam team, there are plans underway for an interactive museum focused on the arts and culture of the villages. Differing from the Tamil Heritage Museum coming up in Bharat Nivas, the hope is to make the museum interactive, hopefully incorporating a restaurant and amphitheatre, perhaps more like the atmosphere of the Visitors Centre, to welcome guests and share the qualities of village life. Balu acknowledges the unique qualities held by the villages in this northern part of Auroville, specifically their level of workmanship and craftmanship and he hopes these can be highlighted in the museum.

Building coalitions

While the Government is now ready to move plans forward, Mohanam’s approach is to slow down and aim for quality. Building a coalition of people to move the project forward is a critical component of its success, according to the organizers. They talk about a past history in Auroville of tiny empires, describing how individual Aurovilians keep control of their individual projects and don’t allow others to share in the management. It’s time to get past that, they say, it’s time to work together.

And they practice what they preach. The Mangalam project is a coalition, as is the recent example of partnering with AuroSoya to create a vegan restaurant on the Bamboo Research Centre campus, or the recent collaboration with Kalai and the IG Museum of Bhopal to bring to Auroville the recent festival on NE India. The Bamboo Centre team saw a natural symbiosis with the Earth Institute, as one builds with earth and one builds with bamboo, and now they offer joint workshops in natural building materials in collaboration with Auroville Consulting. Similarly, the Mohanam team is hoping to work with Auroville architects and people who love museums to collaborate on this next big project.

All of this work doesn’t come without its challenges. Building a coalition in Auroville, for instance, remains an uphill battle. They have sent invitations out to specific individuals to join, but the response has been minimal. They will now follow up in person. But the team also mentions the need for an increase in collective thinking about our relationship with the bioregion, and the need for more people to work toward further collaboration with the neighbouring villages.

But the biggest challenge, which is often a blockage, is the issue of land, both from the Auroville and also the village side. The Mohanam team is working to secure a piece of land of up to two acres to build the museum and art gallery. They would like to see it built on Auroville land. That can be a sensitive issue with surrounding villages, as the community witnessed last June. One of the Aurovilians involved in the Mangalam project began to fence a portion of land with the intention to build. The land is owned by Auroville but has been laying fallow for years, and has been frequented by neighbouring villagers as a thoroughfare, sports ground, and toilet area. Upset that it was suddenly being fenced, a group of village women came to the site to protest. The Aurovilian became upset and he was subjected to physical violence.

Balu says this land issue is something that Auroville needs to look at deeply. “People often sell their land out of pain,” he said. “Very few people want to sell their land. But they have to pay for a marriage, or they owe someone money, so they decide to sell. Auroville purchases it, but there is still a lingering pain in these villagers. What is Auroville doing to heal that?”

Land challenges are also present within the Auroville community. The Bamboo Centre team recently witnessed this when it requested to steward a plot of land so that it can grow bamboo. (At present, the Bamboo Centre spends up to 6 lakh rupees per year on purchasing bamboo outside of Auroville.) The land, which had again been laying fallow for 25 years, was under the stewardship of an Aurovilian who was hesitant to release stewardship. Eventually it was released and then fenced and planted by Balu’s team. Twice the fence has been destroyed and the young bamboo saplings pulled up by villagers, causing over 4 lakh worth of damage. But each time the land has been replanted.

In spite of this, Balu and his team are hopeful. When he looks at all of the past and present challenges facing them, Balu says, “I think about the spirit of Auroville and know that there is something that I learn with each challenge. I believe that the Mother is behind it all.” He continues, “Things have always come at the right time, and now, after 15 years, people are starting to recognize our work and things are picking up momentum.” Balu and his team have big dreams. For the upcoming project, he dreams of four museums, or visitors centres, at the four entrances to Auroville. Each centre would highlight the distinct beauty of the villages nearby. But as the team has done for 15 years, small steps count on the bigger path. Already looking ahead to next year’s Village Heritage Festival, they want it to be run entirely by the women of the three villages, and hope to incorporate more Auroville youth in the process. “We need to move away from ‘us’ and ‘them,’ into ‘we’,” says Balu, and every small step counts along the way.