“I am here because of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo”

Auroville Today: How did you come to Auroville?

Srinivasamurty: My connection with the Ashram preceded my coming to Auroville. My family was not devotees but I was in search of something higher, spiritual, and I discovered the Ashram in 1984. I was not really a devout type but when I visited Ashram for the first time, I felt something very beautiful there. Then my cousin used to speak about The Mother often so, within a few months, I was drawn in. At one point I even thought of joining the Ashram, but Shri M.P.Pandit, who was my guide in the Ashram, said I needed to follow a different path. 

But I kept in contact. For many years, I attended youth camps run by the Sri Aurobindo Society. One of the things we did every year was to cycle to Auroville, where we would visit the Matrimandir and different communities like the Matrimandir gardens, Auromodѐle, Promesse and Aurobrindavan.

In 1995, I was about to take my final Chartered Accountancy exams, so I phoned up the Ashram to receive blessings. I was told by my friend from the Ashram that Auroville was looking for a Finance Officer. Was I interested? I decided to apply, even though I was not fully qualified for the post. However, I was invited for an interview. The interviewing panel asked me if I had government organisational experience.  I said ‘no’ but I was aware of the governmental norms. Then the Secretary, Dr .S.C. De asked me if I was a follower of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo and I said ‘yes’. But, he said, their teachings are universal and can be followed from anywhere, so why do you want to come to Auroville? I said it’s because I feel their presence is concentrated here and I don’t feel like living anywhere else. 

Over the past 28 years you have worked with many different Secretaries, and, meanwhile, your job description changed. Was all this very challenging?

I’ve worked with six different Secretaries, learning a lot, all of whom had different ways of working, while my job description turned out to be an open-ended one. Initially, I thought I would only deal with finance and audit, but soon I was given more and more administrative jobs. After three or four years I informed the then Secretary that a Finance Officer signing many administrative documents, like certificates for visa registration, may not be appropriate. So my designation was changed to Finance and Administrative Officer. Then my work became more administrative and assisting in general superintendence, which I found more interesting than finance and accounts.

But there were also times when you were Acting Secretary. 

Within six months of joining Auroville as Finance Officer, I became Secretary in-charge. I was hardly 31 years old, but I wasn’t overawed as I thought, in my enthusiasm, the job didn’t require a very senior officer to do it. Today I still feel the same, though for different reasons.

Having said that, I think if we – and I speak of myself as an Aurovilian at heart – do have a senior IAS or IPS officer as Secretary, they have something more to contribute because of their vast experience.  They would be able to handle the bureaucracy and all the government agencies much better than we could. In fact, recently I was asked to apply for the Secretary’s post before the present incumbent joined, but I refused because I have grown up here and my way of looking at things is ‘homegrown’, whereas they have a broader perspective and better experience. 

But perhaps your ‘homegrown’ knowledge would have been important in this post. After all, for the government Auroville is a very strange animal: it doesn’t fit in any of the usual boxes. 

It doesn’t fit into any of the existing categories.  I don’t think any of the central government organizations, except, though not really comparable, Shantiniketan, have anything to do with true human unity or spiritual objectives, even remotely.

In fact, one of the senior-most government Secretaries asked Mr. Bala Baskar, “Why is the government meddling with institutions like Auroville? We don’t take over places like this.” Then Mr Bala Baskar had to explain that actually Auroville had invited the government in. 

But it raises the question of whether somebody who is government trained can understand a place like Auroville.

I think government officials can be helpful but they need some kind of good briefing to understand a place like this.

Given your long experience here, were you able to offer guidance to Foundation Secretaries? And were they ready to receive it?

Most of the previous Secretaries used to ask me what I thought, and I could give my suggestions. On occasions, I could help in toning things down if I thought they were going too strong or were planning things which didn’t quite fit the ambience of Auroville. But I wasn’t always successful, which is why Mr. Bala Baskar, who has great maturity and wisdom, said the first thing we in the Foundation office have to do is to ensure that the Aurovilians have confidence in us. Before he came, the community had experienced problems with some of the previous Secretaries.

My advice to the community has always been to keep a list of things that you want to get done – the help you need from Delhi, Chennai, regarding protection, the land etc....

Did you notice a difference in approach between those Secretaries who were close to retirement or had retired already and those who were still career-oriented? 

Very much so. Serving officers are keen to get things done because they are only here for a short while and have to show things done as achievements when they leave. So my advice to the community has always been to keep a list of things that you want to get done – the help you need from Delhi, Chennai, regarding protection, the land etc. – so that the Secretary can concentrate upon these issues rather than focusing on other things. 

My constant refrain was, don’t expect government officers to do yoga. We should be practitioners of yoga but these standards should not be applied to them. We should see them as officials who have been sent here to do a certain job, or to facilitate development. That’s important, because certain situations can only be handled by a representative of the government.

But sometimes there was the impression that some Secretaries already came with an agenda or with a preconceived, but inaccurate, perception of what they thought Auroville is about, and this has resulted in clashes. So how do you think these situations should be handled?

Each IAS officer who comes here is totally different, so you have to expect the unexpected. But if you have a certain clarity about what you need, you can pursue these lines rather than engage in philosophical debates. However, there has to be some give and take. You may want a, b, and c, but if they say the first one is not possible, concentrate on getting the others. 

The Mother wrote that it’s impossible for any outside agency or organization to run Auroville. Do you think this points to a fundamental mismatch between how any outside organization operates and what Auroville is setting out to do? After all, control is a very big part of what any government seeks to establish while freedom is a very important aspect of the Auroville experiment.

I think there is a mismatch at a certain level. You’re quite right that the governmental approach is different and Auroville wants a lot of freedom to function, so how do we balance this in the interim? In an ideal scenario the government would not be here because we would be governing ourselves, and I firmly believe this will happen in the future. But we are not there yet, and we have a lot to learn. 

For worldly and external relations we have to be logical and practical, and we have to understand the functioning of government and outside organisations. This was why I requested Professor Kireet Joshi that we should let Aurovilians work in the Foundation office in order to train them on how to deal with the government. In this way I believe we can equip ourselves to be able to self-govern in future.

I have faith that the government may withdraw once they feel that here in Auroville there is a semblance of management and an organisational structure that can not only protect the ideals but will also not allow it to become a problem for the government. 

Past governments had a certain ‘light-handed’ approach to Auroville. But there is a perception that this government’s relationship to Auroville may be different, that it wants to exercise more control over what happens here. Do you feel this?

Yes, there has been a change. There is a lot of goodwill towards Auroville from the present government and they have been good to us, but there is definitely a great urgency now to get the house in order.

We tend to assume they should listen to us because we are living here, so we know best. Is this one of the problems when it comes to relating to the government?

Yes. The harsh reality is that Auroville has taken very strong positions in their approach or responses to the government. The way we treat the officers, the way we react to them, is seen as indicative of people we have in Auroville. If we challenge the authority, it will be seen as some kind of institution which is misbehaving.

Often, in fact, our obstinacy has made things worse. Some years ago, three Auroville youth refused to apologise to an important man who felt he had been attacked or insulted by them. They refused because they said they had not done anything wrong. But the upshot was that they were sent out of India. So what was achieved by their refusal to apologise? I would like to think that such situations are avoidable. Even though we feel we are right, if we apologise sincerely the problem is usually resolved or intensity mitigated.  

But if you feel you are unjustly accused and you are asked to apologise, in effect you are saying that the accusation was correct.

I agree, this is an ethical dilemma. In a similar situation, following what I would call the traditional Indian or spiritual way, I would apologise, even if the person who accuses me is not a saint or I think the accusation is unjust. Because we are not yet saints ourselves! Besides, we do not have the legal and financial wherewithal to go through the whole legal process to prove that we are right.  

We don't have to compromise our beliefs, but to choose our battles wisely so that even if we lose a battle we can win the war. In situations like this, our main objective should be that we do not want external forces to interfere into Auroville. Kireetbhai knew this well, which is why he went and apologised personally to the man who felt he had been insulted in that case of the Auroville youth.

At times, I thought the present Secretary was willing to make certain concessions if we had not been so adamant in our approach. For example, we should have put the cable through the forest near the Youth Center. I did sound a warning to our groups that you are pushing things in such a way that the government will come down heavily, and you will not be able to resist or recover easily. And this is what has happened. 

Today Auroville does not have the clout with the government to say that they should step back and not interfere and, frankly, I don’t think the present Auroville could handle the situation on its own. At the end of the day, you have to take the long term view. For example, if a road has to come now, let it come, because later it may be changed. If you only focus on controlling what will happen in the next few years, I don’t think that is mature. 

We should be prepared for short-term losses because we have a higher goal and huge responsibility. This project Auroville will last millennia, and I believe Mother said it may be at least 300 years for the supramental transformation to take place. We are aiming at something very high, so why are we wasting our time fighting about petty things? Why should we unnecessarily make issues with the government, from where we need a lot of help?

I know the last two years have not been happy for you as the perception was that you were forced to take action against some Aurovilians, like initiating police reports against individuals and signing Office Orders replacing groups chosen or supported by the Residents Assembly, which you were not happy to do. If you had been the Secretary, would you have done things differently?

Totally. What happened was totally unexpected. I think the events that happened did not require the kind of punishment that was meted out. However, this was the call of the person in charge, and as a member of her team there were certain duty-bound obligations that I had to fulfill. 

What can you say to those people who feel betrayed by you?

Their reaction is understandable, but it was not a betrayal. I had to act from the point of view of my official position. Besides, I knew that if I didn’t sign, somebody else would sign, because it was decided at a higher level and was going to happen anyway.

I don’t feel I have gone against the principles that I believe in. I feel I’ve done my best, in the given situation. I was not the Secretary and, besides, I was under great pressure, with little choice and limited capacity.

We can go softer, we can proceed more slowly, was my suggestion during the first six months. After that, I felt I was being increasingly mistrusted. I was not involved in any important meetings and slowly all my major responsibilities were taken away. I was gradually shunted out, put in a corner and made to feel persona non grata. 

I had never been treated like this before. Previous Secretaries and Chairmen had a lot of confidence in me because within a few months they understood that I knew a little bit about Auroville and that I was reliable. This allowed us to get on with the office work, the job of administering Auroville. But this time it was different. 

How have you handled this?

Initially, it was a big jolt to my ego and pride, my sense of self-esteem. I wondered what I had done to deserve this, but then a friend said you have to take it in the spirit of yoga. So that’s what I try to do. I thought, if you don’t do sadhana, Mother will make you do sadhana. Maybe I was not doing enough before, so I should shed my ego, my sense of self-importance, and intensify my yoga because this has never been a career-oriented job for me. I am here because of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother: I am here to grow beyond the normal human being.