A Unique Friendship – J.R.D. Tata and Auroville

Book review — Authored by Carel

Cover - A Unique Friendship: JRD Tata and Auroville

This small book is a recollection of J.R.D. Tata’s involvement with Auroville as well as a meditative reflection by the author, Frederick (Friedrich Schulze Buxloh), of his very special relationship with this great man, one of India’s foremost industrialists who in 1992 was awarded India’s highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna, for his contribution to India’s development as the head of the then largest industrial conglomerate.

Many books have been written about J.R.D. Tata, but none mention his involvement with Auroville. Yet, it was profound and had lasting consequences. In “How it All Began” Frederick recounts meeting him for the first time at an Auroville exhibition in Bombay, where a casual discussion on Auroville’s first attempt at building a windmill led to the National Aeronautical Laboratory in Bangalore, of which J.R.D. Tata was the Chairman, ‘flooding Auroville with windmills’. For J.R.D. Tata (‘Jeh’ to his friends) was intrigued by Auroville. “I am not a follower of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, but I am intrigued. There is an old lady sitting in Pondicherry and she invites the youth of the world, and they are coming. What’s it?”

The book mentions JRD’s help in the conflicts with the Sri Aurobindo Society and his setting up, together with Satprem, Kireet Joshi and Bijoy Singh Nahar, of Auromitra – Friends of Auroville Research Foundation – through which funds from donors could be channeled to Auroville independently of the Sri Aurobindo Society. He also gave personal visa guarantees to Frederick and his family, and later to Savitra and Francis, when these had been recalled by the Sri Aurobindo Society. He was involved in bringing the audio tapes of the Mother’s conversations with Satprem to France, where later on they were transcribed and published as L’Agenda de Mère. And he gave letters of introduction to many great industrial houses, urging them to help Auroville.

In 1980, when the Government of India headed by Mrs. Indira Gandhi passed the Auroville Emergency Provisions Act, he became a member of the Auroville International Advisory Council, together with Mr. M’Bow, the Secretary-General of UNESCO, Mr. Narasimha Rao, the then Minister of Education and later Prime Minister of India, and Ms. Lyudmila Zhivkova, the Minister of Culture and Education of Bulgaria. Mr. Kireet Joshi, then Special Secretary Ministry of Education, was the Council’s Secretary. The book has a report of the only time this Council could meet in Auroville. Frederick further recounts how JRD, at Kireet’s Joshi’s request, helped to reformulate certain important passages of the Auroville Foundation Act.

The major part of this book describes the intense personal relationship between Jeh and Frederick, which can be felt throughout the book, in the many documents which are shown, but especially in the meditative comments Frederick has added. If Jeh admired Frederick “for his dedication to a great cause”, Frederick admired Jeh as “being a knight of light, of courage, of truth and of love.”

For Frederick, JRD’s last visit to Auroville was particularly intense. He recollects that, when JRD had come back to his room to rest, he had told Frederick, “Now you tell me.” “That voice came from faraway and it reached a faraway place in me,” recounts Frederick. “Somehow it unlocked something which had been pent up in me, a flow of – well the best word for it would be dreams, but it was more than dreams, it was like the golden essence of why I am on earth. I must have spoken for twenty, thirty minutes. What he heard or whether he had fallen asleep by that time, I do not know. But for me, it was a very strong experience of opening up in his presence.”

The next day JRD returned to Chennai by helicopter and graciously offered a seat to some of the Aurovilians who had hosted him. Frederick brought a big bag of bougainvillea, the flower Mother called ‘Protection’, and together they showered these flowers over the Matrimandir and Auroville.

The book is a fine and intense read.