Change has to come from within

Auroville Today: You lived in Auroville during the conflict with the Sri Aurobindo Society. Do you think that the present situation is at all reminiscent of that period? 

Michel: It is partly reminiscent in the sense that, back then, the Sri Aurobindo Society was striving to take complete control of Auroville, and now the current administration basically claims that it holds all decision power to manage Auroville. I submitted to the Governing Board several times that it should instead regard itself as a guide, trustee and protector of Auroville, but at present the attempt is to take control, often through dubious or objectionable means, of all aspects of Auroville’s life and activities. 

In a letter of 1969 to a disciple regarding UNESCO, Mother asserted, “To hand over the management of Auroville to any country or any group however big it may be is an absolute impossibility.” Her conception of Auroville was a laboratory and an experiment; she called it a ‘great adventure’ — and an adventure is not a neatly planned project. That is why flexibility is a crucial factor, and also why Mother prodded the early Aurovilians to find solutions by themselves: she clearly wanted the thing to grow organically, as individuals themselves grew. She knew that having put her Force here, it would push things in the right direction. In contrast, the current administration is pushing for a regimented, rigid, visionless structure that will eventually kill that essential freedom to experiment.

Another unfortunate parallel is in the use of fallacious propaganda: the Sri Aurobindo Society would call us drug addicts, hippies, morally degraded etc.; to that vocabulary the present administration has added ‘zamindars’, ‘encroachers’, ‘lawbreakers’, ‘anti-nationals’, and so on. Each of those terms, if scrutinised objectively, is wholly unfounded. So in both cases we see a strong tendency to denigrate what Auroville has achieved in order to exert control over it. It’s a standard strategy: if you can prove that an experiment has failed or that people can’t manage their own affairs, then you have legitimized a takeover. Certainly, Aurovilians (and I repeat here what many of them have been telling me for years) have not always lived up to the ideal, sometimes far from it; but Mother did not expect them to be transformed overnight, and overall, the ‘experiment’ has undeniably met with commendable success in many fields. 

One difference I do note, if I compare it with 50 years ago, is that there is much greater maturity today in the way many Aurovilians have responded to the present crisis. Then the fight against the SAS was not always ‘clean’, there were some extreme reactions; today, residents have on the whole found dignified, mature ways to make their views heard, and to protest calmly if need be. Of course, there is a deep divide in the community, which is partly an engineered divide, but it has not been allowed to degenerate into violent reactions. I see a lot of inner progress in this. I have met many people and am struck by their sincere attempt to understand things at a deeper level: “What does Mother want us to learn from this?” — but not the way the current administration has pronounced that Auroville ‘needs to be shaken’; I find this approach insensitive. 

This inner progress, I feel, gives strength, resilience, and will hopefully help the community overcome the current crisis. It cannot possibly last, because on one side we have a blinkered vision, and on the other we have people who have worked very hard for decades and earned respect for Auroville the world over. While the current administration declares that Aurovilians have failed, people have come from India and abroad to learn from their experiments and achievements. 

So I think we have to regard this as an unfortunate phase and, as I and Gabi Gillessen (another IAC member) wrote to the Chairman of the Governing Board, a missed opportunity. When the new Governing Board was constituted over a year ago, they had a golden opportunity to unblock certain collective processes which were hampering Auroville’s progress. Initially, there was tremendous goodwill; I personally witnessed how warmly the new Secretary was received and taken around. But very soon, measures of coercion and imposition kicked in, and this spoiled the atmosphere. This was quite unnecessary, in my view, a misguided strategy — the community was ready to collaborate at many levels and to offer its experience and expertise, and was dismayed to find it rejected (as were external experts of goodwill, such as Vastu Shilpa).

The question many of us have been wrestling with is what the root cause of the current crisis is. Some say there is a larger political agenda while Raghu, for example, (see page 4) says he thinks the seeds of this go way back, to things that were not resolved in Auroville in the past. What do you think is the root cause?

I’m not sure I know the answer to this question. However, concerning Raghu’s comment, one could say that the seeds go even further back — even to the beginning of humanity, because these are at bottom issues of coexistence and collective harmony; it’s precisely Auroville’s mission to solve them. 

I think, however, that the unilateral actions of the present administration have had a big part to play in causing the current crisis. In a joint meeting with the Governing Board, Gabi put it very well; she said that if Auroville has to change, the change must come from within. If it is imposed from outside, either it will be short-lived, or it will damage something essential to Auroville. Unfortunately, nobody on the Board seems to be listening to such advice. If the Governing Board were fulfilling its mandate spelled out in the Auroville Foundation Act, it would just be advising the residents: “This is not working”, or “You need to streamline that”, or “Let’s meet to discuss this point”, and so on. It should not be, “Do this, or else your visa is in danger or your maintenance will be cut.” These methods are unacceptable, not only because they are unjustified and unethical, but because they are contrary to the spirit of Auroville.

So in my view, there is in the present administration a vision deficit, a trust deficit and a deficit of ethical means of functioning, for any administration is expected to work under set norms of transparency, accountability and consultation, none of which is the case here.

If the Governing Board is not fulfilling its function, the IAC has an even more important role to play. In terms of the Act one of your main roles is to advise the Governing Board. Is that happening at present? If not, why not? 

The IAC has two mandates under the Foundation Act (although we know that Mother would not have wanted her vision to be limited by legal or administrative definitions). One is to advise the Governing Board, the second is to ensure that Auroville residents will have the freedom to conduct their activities in conformity with the Auroville Charter. We have not been successful in either of these tasks.

Within the present IAC, while we all agree on the need for Auroville to develop along the lines envisioned by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, we do not necessarily agree on the way to get there. And so we concurred that we don’t necessarily have to speak with one voice. Gabi and I, for instance, have tried to raise issues of immediate concern to the community and propose solutions; other members have emphasized more the need to spread Sri Aurobindo’s teaching; one (Dena) tries to promote dialogue, which in my and Gabi’s opinion should be preceded by a retreat from unjustified coercive and intimidatory measures.

But having agreed to a modus vivendi within the IAC, we encountered other difficulties. Firstly, in the joint Governing Board / IAC meetings, so far very little time has been reserved for significant exchanges. Even when we had a few minutes to express our concern with certain burning issues, no proper exchange followed. Besides, our joint meetings are not minuted (despite my repeated requests), nor are minutes of the Governing Board’s own meetings and decisions shared; they are classified information, it would appear — the whole functioning is opaque. And letters addressed to the Governing Board or its Chairman remain unanswered, even when they contain sets of positive recommendations to resolve the impasse.

As regards guaranteeing the freedom of residents to conduct their activities, the IAC can only advise the Board. For instance, when meeting after meeting the Governing Board and the Secretary would make not only contemptuous and disrespectful sweeping remarks on Auroville, but also allegations of ‘serious’ financial irregularities, criminal activities, drug addiction and so on, I would ask them to give us some evidence. Even in ordinary society, you cannot censure people without providing evidence and giving them the right to respond. But neither has evidence been provided nor have the accused (Aurovilians critical of the administration’s ways, it seems) had any right to respond and defend themselves. So even basic democratic norms are violated. 

In a 1926 talk, Sri Aurobindo said: “I have no faith in government controls because I believe in a certain amount of freedom — freedom to find out things for oneself in one’s own way, even freedom to commit blunders. Nature leads us through various errors and mistakes. When Nature created the human being with all his possibilities of errors and mistakes she knew very well what she was about. Freedom for experiment in human life is a great thing. Without the freedom to take risk and commit mistakes there can be no progress. ...Growth of consciousness cannot come without freedom.” This is, in short, Auroville’s story — and a striking echo of the Charter. And I have to say that, so far, this Governing Board has made no serious effort to understand that story.

Is your inability to influence the Governing Board partly due to the fact that the IAC does not speak with one voice? 

I don’t think so. It is not that other members of the IAC have disagreed with concerns raised by Gabi and myself. I remember a third IAC member, in our joint meeting of August 12, calling for all the three bodies of the Foundation (the Governing Board, the IAC and the Residents’ Assembly) to find ways to work together for harmony to be established. For some time, a fourth member has expressed a wish to help resolve the visa issue (though there is no improvement as yet).

Practically, what do you see as the way ahead?

The three bodies of the Foundation have to be in genuine dialogue and work together transparently. We need to go back to the original spirit of the Auroville Foundation Act, which requires the three bodies to interact in a spirit of ‘mutuality’ (as Kireet Joshi rightly called it), and, if I may add, mutual humility. Nobody should declare that “I have the truth and you have to take it from me” or “I’ll hear you out, but anyway will proceed on my set path”, which comes to the same. It is perfectly feasible for the three bodies to work together, but for this to happen the current administration has to change its mindset. I think if this doesn’t change, litigation will increase and, in the meantime, Auroville will get a bad name, people and organizations abroad will stop getting involved and sending funds. 

But more serious than the monetary aspect is the damage inflicted on Auroville’s deeper reality. People have been coming to Auroville drawn by the call to inner adventure, by an aspiration to create something new, to be sucked into this spirit of creativity that Mother outlined in the Charter; for decades, Auroville has been a magnet for such people, included many with high accomplishments. Almost every time you speak to a visitor, you find they have been touched by something here, by the different atmosphere. This ‘something’ may be subtle, but for me it’s the most precious part of Auroville — the invisible item at the end of the list of its impressive achievements that has been circulating of late. It is what makes Auroville what it is, what it can be — and it is this that is now being damaged. 

If Auroville can impact tens of thousands of lives in the way that it has, then it is undoubtedly worthwhile, and the government would immensely benefit from giving it the gentle support it needs. That is my conviction. In fact, Auroville already embeds many of the good practices that governments the world over (including India’s and Tamil Nadu’s) claim to promote – in nature conservation, water management, innovative education, renewable energies, alternative architecture and construction, social work with the villages, alternative lifestyles, etc. – so a genuine collaboration is bound to be very fruitful.

I do hope good sense will prevail and the Governing Board will understand that it’s not too late to redress matters.

You have also written about the need for the residents to draw up a ‘road map’. 

Gabi and I had this perception that the residents and their working groups should counter the current administration’s misleading propaganda that many Aurovilians are ‘anti-city’ and ‘anti-development’; we know that 95% of the community or more agree on the need for a certain kind of development — but not any kind of development. A meaningful development should do two things: it should respect what Auroville has already accomplished and build upon it; also, it should integrate with the bioregion, because Auroville cannot develop in isolation.

To achieve this, Auroville needs a new master plan, because no master plan can be considered valid after 20 years. But that will take some time; meantime, we have suggested collecting a number of existing projects, eloquent enough in their totality to show that there is a vision, plenty of expertise, and people who can work things out here: something that shows the way forward because these projects exist (quite a few of them are already sanctioned or somehow endorsed by the community) and they do build up into a far-reaching vision of Auroville’s development, which is not only ambitious but achievable.

Of course, for this to have a chance, the freedom and internal decision-making powers promised to the residents must be restored. I see no reason why the Foundation’s three bodies could not collaborate in this. Micromanagement and total rule by the Governing Board is diametrically opposed to Mother’s repeated injunctions for Auroville. It is time we started listening to her.