Collaboration is the way forward

We are passing through an intense period of polarisation and conflict in Auroville and it is extremely challenging for all of us. However, regardless of the difficulties, I do have this silent faith that the soul of Auroville is indestructible, incorruptible and mighty. I don’t know when this faith got settled in me, perhaps it comes from my faith in the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and their words. Auroville is their work and nothing can stop the manifestation of Auroville or the birth of a new creation on earth. This is a certitude without any trace of doubt and everything else is built on this foundation.

Over the years I have learnt that conflict is an opportunity for deep self-reflection and rapid progress if I am willing to step out of the grip of my ego. Another counterintuitive understanding is that I am not building Auroville, instead, the deeper truth is Auroville is building me. Auroville already exists as a force field and when I offer myself unconditionally into the vortex of transformation, the force field will churn and take out all the crudeness from within me and purify and push me forward on a path of transformation way beyond my imagination. These insights are my companions on the way during these difficult times.

Broken relationships

When I am told that the Governing Board (GB), the Secretary and the International Advisory Council (IAC) are outsiders, often I wonder what it really means. Legally it makes no sense at all, nor does it make any spiritual sense. Yes, emotionally you may feel like that and it implies an emotionally broken relationship. I remember when my bike was broken down on an empty highway at night and a stranger stopped by and helped me to get it started. It gave an instant sense of brotherhood even if it was a stranger. Someone helped me to go forward on my path and that felt like all-pervading divine grace. The GB and the Secretary are meant to support Auroville in its manifestation but for many Aurovilians it is now an emotionally broken relationship and the court has become a go-to place. Even within the community, many bonds that lived through decades are now broken and the laundry of the community is now social media content for narrative wars.

The destiny of India and Auroville

When I study the last three of Sri Aurobindo’s five dreams, it is obvious that the destiny of India and Auroville are woven into each other. In 1968, a week before the inauguration of Auroville, the Mother received a powerful message from Sri Aurobindo and a clear vision. “India is the representation of all human difficulties on earth, and it is in India that the... cure will be found. And then, that is why – THAT IS WHY I was made to start Auroville.” From this perspective, it is clear that regardless of the political leanings, the past, present and future Governments of India and Auroville are destined for shared destiny in the world. We have seen it unfold over the decades and India has gone out of her way to protect the Auroville project.

India had never been a predatory nation in her entire history and dharma had always been her bedrock of stability and north pole of destiny. India intuitively knows what spirituality is, her spiritual mission in the world and the value of Auroville in that context. India has already begun to play a prominent role in global geopolitics and has developed powerful statesmanship. The timid phase of India is over and there is bold and swift development and the winds of this change have reached Auroville. India clearly knows that Auroville is a crown jewel of India, a gift of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo to the world. You can see this in the video on India’s G20 presidency, where the Matrimandir is prominently present. It is not surprising that the Government of India has chosen to actively engage with Auroville but how did the shared destiny turn so bitter?

Our success story

There are plenty of tangible signs of our success, our labour of love over more than five decades that have drawn people from around the world to Auroville. Whether it is Matrimandir, afforestation, water management, organic agriculture, renewable energy, architectural innovations, beautiful handicrafts, or high-quality international cuisine Auroville has established a great reputation for excellence. Otherwise, there is no reason for people from around the world to come to Auroville in thousands every day - a place that was a barren land just five decades ago. Besides all this, after the conflict with the Sri Aurobindo Society (SAS) was settled, Aurovilians, regardless of increasing numbers and nationalities, have lived together peacefully for more than three decades. It is a miracle that Auroville not only survived but also grew into a thriving diversity of excellence in a small rural setting. It was the late Shraddhavan who told me once that it takes tremendous courage to join Auroville and become a stupid Aurovilian, stripped of all the identities and labels of the outside world, to become a nobody in particular. Yes, we have done it with grit and perseverance, regardless of our limitations and imperfections. We are ordinary people with extraordinary dreams and we know the pain and struggle we have gone through to transform this barren land that has now become a magnet attracting people from around the world. That is why it hurts, hurts like hell, when the new chairman of the Governing Board tells us that we have failed.

Where did we fail?

When it comes to protecting the land of our master plan area or simplifying our complex internal bureaucracy and non-transparent and complex financial system, or governance or building common infrastructure like housing or roads to meet the growing demands, our internal processes have been hopelessly inadequate or even counterproductive. We couldn’t go beyond endless discussions and the creation of documents full of ideas for change. The number of studies, workshops, and documents created in the last two decades is enough proof. While we could successfully transform the available land when it came to collective systemic transformation, there was no executive power that could effectively put things into well-aligned collective action. We were living like a collection of fiefdoms that could never come to an agreement on common action for the larger good of Auroville, even if the house was on fire. There is no point in denying it.

Besides such internal stagnation due to disagreements on joint action, we were coming under attack by people like Vikram Ram who were putting pressure on the government at all levels and the GB accusing Auroville of all kinds of misdeeds. In fact, the previous GB had to even initiate an Enquiry Committee. On the other hand, the previous Working Committee had even filed a writ petition in the Madras High Court demanding government protection of the land designated for Auroville. It was in this context the new GB and the Secretary was put in place by the Government for direct intervention to help Auroville to come out of the internal deadlock. So when the new Chairman came and made his sharp observations, it hurt like hell because there was truth in it, the bitter truth of our struggles and failures in transforming our internal systems and processes that were suffocating us.

Intervention

The first report of the GB (57th meeting) was accurate with surgical precision on the issues we were entangled with. While I would consider the goal of 15,000 people by 2025 to be unrealistic, overall I saw a great deal of benevolence and goodwill coming from the side of the GB.

The very first intervention was the successful recovery, in July 2021, through eviction of the occupied land at AuroOrchard, a problem that was festering for 20 years, something that our internal processes couldn’t resolve. However, when it came to clearing the ground for the Crown development, hell broke out. It is a well-known fact within the community that the Youth Centre was intentionally placed decades ago on the Crown by the people who did not want the Crown, and so was the planting of the trees in the area designated for the Crown. The intentions of the people who did it were loud and clear.

The development of the road was blocked, and the laying of power cables was blocked even when we had a gazetted master plan. There was nothing our internal process could do to resolve this conflict. Rather our internal process was well suited to block any development if you get a group of people together and glorify it as a community process. All Working Groups were disempowered to do anything about it and the dysfunctionality and injustice were well wrapped under the cover of ecology and human unity. Any small coalition of people can impose their will on the collective development based on their self-interest or personal ideologies and there was no internal power to deal with it.

Breach of trust and the pain under the green carpet

When a piece of land is given to you to be a custodian till the time comes for building the city, and when you intentionally build structures over a planned road or plant trees over them to block the development, and then when the time comes for the development of the planned things, you refuse to give back the plot given to you in good trust, you are destroying the very fabric of trust that builds a society. Behind the facade of greenwash, it is a breach of trust, a rupture in the very foundation of our social fabric. But we had become desensitised and numb through repeated experiences of such violations and had accepted this as a way of life and normalised the pain. Indeed, it benefited a section of our community, it protected their territorial rights and kept the fiefdoms intact in the disguise of ecology and community process. Below this green carpet of our success were the buried dreams of a city, the city the earth needs, the city of dawn, the city of Sri Aurobindo. It was a promise made by the Mother to the world, a promise of building an ideal city for 50000 people, a promise we repeated to the Government of India to protect this land. Unfortunately, the fact is we have not succeeded in protecting the land or in building the city.

JCB of Change

The new GB took up the land and building of the city as a top priority. When we observe the sequence of events we can see that the methods used by the Secretary with the support of the GB, were becoming increasingly heavy-handed in direct proportion to the resistance put up by a section of Aurovilians. There was clearly a clash of two cultures - the way the Government officials work and the way our community processes work. After 6 months of unsuccessful discussions, the encounters turned more physical, which included physically blocking the JCB sent to clear the land for the road. This, in turn, brought the police, and the rest is the history of spiralling downward into the pit of our collective shadow. It is a co-created reality and blaming the Secretary alone for the whole thing is irresponsible ignorance. The world is only a mirror showing us what we are and what we find shocking in others is lurking secretly in our own subconscious. The minimum dignity required is to own up to at least 50% responsibility for what happened. But this requires courage and intellectual honesty to face ourselves and put aside the ego and stop playing the victim.

Shifting from confrontation to collaboration

India and Auroville have a shared global destiny and mission and it is time that we live up to that higher call and follow the path of collaboration. Even though we have already seriously damaged our relationship with the Government of India, I believe it is still not too late to course correct and find ways to collaborate. Our greatest enemy is our fear and it is nothing new, this had been crippling our internal workings by making every Working Group into a scapegoat, and now it is projected onto the Secretary. This is a co-created entanglement in which many are playing the victim role. This is a deep-rooted psychological problem and it can be healed only by handling power not as a teenage rebel but as a mature adult.

There are critically important areas of work where we need help to overcome our difficulties. The first and foremost is to acquire the missing lands for Auroville. Everything else is transient formations on top of the land. Generations of people will come and go, but the land will remain and that must be protected for the future. It is not about us, but about the long-term future of Auroville. This is one area where the new GB and the Secretary are putting in a great deal of effort if we are to judge by the meeting minutes of the GB. Perhaps it is our last chance to protect the land, and that makes it critically important that we collaborate with Government officials in this effort.

The second major area is to simplify the Trusts structure and streamline our financial system for accuracy, compliance and transparent reporting for accountability and insightful collective overview. Our previous FAMCs have tried to do it but there was no cooperation from various trustees and there was no internal capacity to bring such large-scale systemic change. This, too, is an area the Secretary has actively taken up for transformation and it is critically important that we collaborate in this effort. It will be the foundation upon which a thriving start-up ecosystem can emerge that can move towards the financial independence of Auroville, a necessary condition for autonomy.

The third important area is to go beyond lip service to building the city and start serious work on infrastructure and removing the housing bottleneck which is stopping the growth of Auroville. The fourth is to establish university-level education, lifelong learning opportunities and related facilities for the youth to thrive in Auroville. Auroville has tremendous potential as a lifelong learning society. This, too, is a priority area the Secretary is working on and our collaboration is critical. None of this will harm Auroville, rather it will open the doors to higher possibilities for Auroville.

We also need to come out of the tourism-driven individualistic and consumeristic economy into which we have fallen, and get out of the vote bank politics and clan coterie system. All this requires serious efforts and the GB and Secretary are here to provide that. But their work culture and language are different and we need to understand each other’s ways without fear and shadow projection.

Patient collaboration is the way forward.