Statement on Auroville’s current situation

Almost sixty years ago, a handful of people from distant parts of the world and, later, India heard the Mother’s silent call and started trickling into the area now known as Auroville, then a nearly bare expanse of red soil. Through the hard work and dedication of what grew to be hundreds, this place and community, with all its limitations and imperfections, became an inspiration to all those aspiring for alternatives to the world’s current self- destructive direction. Apart from visible manifestations — a regenerated land and water table, productive farms, the Matrimandir, handicraft units, pioneering researches and techniques of all kinds — countless visitors to Auroville, trainees, volunteers, students, have testified to a life-changing experience. And Auroville’s large pool of experts in every conceivable field has provided skills and knowhow not only to the bioregion, but also to governments and private institutions in India and abroad.

Following the takeover of Auroville’s assets by the Government of India in 1980, successive administrations and (since 1988) Governing Boards of the Auroville Foundation, chaired by distinguished personalities — Dr Karan Singh, Shri Kireet Joshi, Dr. M.S. Swaminathan — worked in concert with the Residents’ Assembly, advised also by the International Advisory Council. General and smaller meetings were regularly held. Despite many difficulties and challenges, a spirit of “mutuality” between these three bodies (to use Shri Kireet Joshi’s favourite term) was palpable, and steady progress could be made. This progress was acknowledged the world over, also by the Central and Tamil Nadu Governments. It was restated by India’s Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi when he visited Auroville on the occasion of its 50th anniversary. Arguably, progress could have been more substantial and smoother in many areas, and opportunities were missed. Nevertheless, Auroville somehow kept working and growing.

Since July 2021, the current administration of the Auroville Foundation has declared that all of the above amounts to very little, apparently taking the view that a “city “of concrete roads and buildings was the only way forward. Incomprehensibly, it has repeatedly shown deep contempt for Auroville’s afforestation, water management and rural development programmes, among other sterling accomplishments. Falsely claiming to follow the Master Plan 2001 (which is only a broad framework), operating without a detailed plan or an environmental audit, it has irrationally insisted on perfect circles for Auroville’s internal roads, and on 12 radial roads, all of which are now destroying thousands of precious trees and degrading the very environment that the Master Plan wisely put at the centre of Auroville’s development:

“There cannot be a complete freedom for individuals, groups of individuals or institutions to carry out developments without consideration for the surrounding environment. ... Development proposals will be considered only ... if effectively eco- friendly and environmentally appropriate ... Innovative models and techniques in the field of afforestation, land development, water conservation, rainwater harvesting, building technology, community participation, energy saving, etc. incorporated in the Master Plan would be integral to the township development and management.”

The world over, forward-looking urban planners currently strive to follow precisely such a vision. What we now witness in Auroville is, in sad contrast, a return to a failed past. Witness the needlessly broad roads (without a proper circulation plan for the bioregion), the wasteful huge concrete slabs, the exclusion of well-designed, forward-looking urban plans by Auroville’s own experts or by successful community processes such as the Dreamweaving. As Mother wrote in a 1971 message: “Auroville should not fall back into old errors which belong to a past that is trying to revive.” Yet that is precisely what we are now witnessing.

This is even more visible in the strong-arm tactics the Community has endured for over two years now. We will not detail here the unjustifiable methods deployed to coerce Residents into obedience — including denial of visas or monthly maintenances, opaque and objectionable land exchanges, unilateral takeover of internal working groups, exclusion of Auroville’s world-class experts in all fields, side-lining of the Residents’ Assembly, and the shameful demonization of those who have questioned these methods. In several letters and statements addressed to the Governing Board’s Chairperson, we have objected to all of the above, and offered constructive suggestions as well as our cooperation to work out collaborative solutions, without our advice being heard or our offer made use of.

We will also not discuss here the recent “notifications” through which the administration has arrogated to itself the power to decide of admissions and terminations in Auroville, and to appoint its own “Working Committee”, except to state that they clearly seek to disempower the Residents’ Assembly and its working groups, and are, in our opinion, illegitimate, unethical, and one more violation of the spirit of mutuality at the core of the Auroville Foundation Act.

Instead, we wish to highlight what, in our careful estimate, lies at the heart of the current phase of misgovernance:

1. The complete breakdown of the spirit of mutuality, with both Governing Board and the Auroville Foundation’s Secretary rejecting due processes of consultation, which are the established norm in any democratic society, and should be much more so in an experiment for creating a new type of society.

2. The Governing Board’s failure to rein in the administration and its Secretary. Unfortunately, none of the Governing Board members fulfils the conditions laid down in the Auroville Foundation Act, which states that they should have “rendered valuable service to Auroville ... [and] contributed significantly in activities that are being pursued or are envisaged to be promoted in Auroville, including activities relating to environment, afforestation, arts and crafts, industry, agriculture, humanities, sciences and integral yoga.” This explains that the current Governing Board members readily accepted the narrative of Auroville Residents being “anti-India”, “anti-city” and so on, not realizing how misleading and harmful it was. The Governing Board members could have remedied their shortcomings through multiple exchanges and consultations with Residents, experts, units, working groups, and by conducting open houses and other meetings, but chose instead to cut themselves off from the Community and ignore the existence of the Residents’ Assembly, one of the Foundation’s three bodies, which they are mandated to work in consultation with.

3.  A misreading of the Auroville Charter and the Auroville Foundation Act. Since “Auroville belongs to nobody in particular”, it cannot belong to the Auroville Foundation. In legal terms, the Foundation does own Auroville’s lands and assets, but the Auroville Foundation Act 1988 makes it clear that it was designed “for the better management and further development of Auroville in accordance with its original charter”.

The Charter is thus supreme (indeed, what would Auroville’s purpose be without it?) and the Auroville Foundation is morally a custodian and trustee of Auroville’s assets, not an owner in the ordinary sense of the term.

It is also crucial to note that apart from a few buildings for educational and allied purposes, the Foundation has not created these assets; all lands and most buildings of Auroville have been created out of private funds and donations, from within Auroville’s own resources or from donors in India and abroad. And they have been developed through the hard labour of generations of Residents. To dispose of those assets without any consultation is unacceptable and disregards Auroville’s foundational principles.

 On the specific issue of land exchanges for the desirable consolidation of lands in the City and Green Belt areas, the recent case of disposal of a large portion of AuroOrchard, one of Auroville’s oldest and most productive farms, is a case in point, with huge underestimation of the land and consequent huge financial loss to Auroville, when alternatives existed and were agreed upon by the Community a decade ago; several misleading statements were issued to the effect that the portion given away was not under agriculture and contained no house of residents, when the reality was opposite.

The Governing Board should realize the profound immorality of unilaterally disposing of such lands when the Auroville Foundation did nothing to develop them and turn them into the invaluable farms, buffer zones, sources of groundwater, etc. that they now are.

Abandoning the Charter, issuing unilateral and arbitrary diktats, brushing aside all advice received, indulging in opaque and unethical practices, will certainly not create the Auroville of Mother’s dreams. Auroville was not intended to become a real estate project with the appearance of a regimented “spiritual” community.

We once more call upon the Auroville Foundation’s Governing Board and Secretary to change course, reverse recent decisions, engage in genuine consultations with the Residents’ Assembly, and make a sincere attempt to understand Auroville — which implies understanding both its successes and its failures, and acting as a “helping hand” (as the Chairperson once said) to boost the successes further and work out solutions to resolve the failures or limitations in a collaborative atmosphere.

Let us recall the core of Auroville’s adventure: not for a set of roads and buildings, which could be done anywhere else in the world, but to create a new society of human beings endowed with a consciousness higher than the old mental ego now triumphing everywhere. As Mother said in 1972: “In Auroville I do not want many men. I want some people, but true people. If you want many people, I can give you a hundred thousand in a moment from South Africa.”

Let us also recall how the Auroville Foundation Act wisely asks the International Advisory Council, in “tendering any advice to the Governing Board” to “endeavour to secure that (a) the ideals for which Auroville has been established are encouraged, and (b) the residents of Auroville are allowed freedom to grow and develop activities and institutions for the fulfilment of the aspirations and programmes envisaged in the said Charter of Auroville.” This freedom is what has been denied in recent times, and what must be restored. It is central to Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy and vision of a future humanity, as he said in 1926:

“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, too, is Auroville’s core and roadmap.

With hope and prayers,

Gabi Gillessen and Michel Danino, members Auroville Foundation’s International Advisory Council, January 30th, 2024

This statement has been endorsed by the following international personalities:

1. Robert A.F. Thurman

One of America’s leading voices for the teachings of Buddhism, in 1997 he was named by Time Magazine one of the 25 most influential Americans and called “a larger than life scholar-activist destined to convey the dharma, the precious teaching of Siddhartha, from Asia to America.” Prof Thurman studied in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in India and the United States. He was professor in the Religion Department of Columbia University where he holds the Jey Tsong Khapa chair in Indo-Tibetan Studies. He is also the co-founder of the Tibet House in New York. On 21 June 2023, Prof Thurman, a Padma Shri awardee, met India’s Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, who tweeted that they “exchanged perspectives on how Buddhist values can act as guiding light for finding solutions to global challenges.”

In December 2000, Prof Thurman visited Auroville with his wife and exchanged with a number of Aurovilians.

2. Doudou Diène

 Doudou Diène is a Senegalese jurist. He was United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance from 2002–2008. He held several posts in UN bodies, and is former Director of the Division of Inter-cultural Projects at UNESCO. He served as a member of Auroville’s International Advisory Council in 2004-2013.

3. Vishakha N. Desai

A professor at Columbia University, she is former President emerita of the Asia Society in New York, member of the USA's National Museum & Library Services Board, and Senior Adviser for Global Policy & Programs, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Prof Vishakha Desai is currently a senior advisor to the President of Columbia University; senior research scholar in global studies at the School of International and Public Affairs; trustee of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation; and a member of the board of directors of Mahindra and Mahindra. Prof Vishakha Desai is a former member of Auroville's International Advisory Council

4. Sir Mark Tully

A British Indian-based journalist and commentator born in Calcutta, he worked with the BBC for some 30 years, covering major events of South Asia, and was Bureau Chief of the BBC in New Delhi. A prolific author of books on India, he was made Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1985, was knighted in 2002, and was awarded Padma Shri in 1992 and Padma Bhushan in 2005. Mark Tully is a former member of Auroville’s International Advisory Council.

5. Federico Mayor Zaragoza

A scientist, scholar, politician, diplomat, and poet from Spain, he served as the Director- General of the UNESCO from 1987 to 1999 and is Chairman of the Foundation for a Culture of Peace. He served as a member of Auroville’s International Advisory Council and sent this statement on the occasion of Auroville’s 40th anniversary: “Auroville's ability to survive and evolve over four decades bears witness to the strength of the founding principles and the resolve and perseverance of its citizens. In today's globalized world fraught with regional conflicts and economic instability, it is especially reassuring to witness such enduring models of solidarity and humanism.”

6. Julian Lines

President of Matagiri Sri Aurobindo Center, which was founded in 1968 in Woodstock, New York, he has served on the boards of the Foundation for World Education, as Chairperson of Auroville International, and on Auroville’s International Advisory Council. He has visited Auroville many times.

7. David Stein

The son of Joseph Allen Stein, he grew up in India where his father worked and taught as a prominent architect. He has more than 30 years of professional involvement in urban and regional development, transportation planning and comprehensive planning. He has visited Auroville many times and advised Auroville planners on bioregional water planning. His additional separate statement is reproduced below.

8.  Mira Nakashima

An architect and furniture designer in charge of the George Nakashima Woodworker. She visited the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville numerous times and raised funds to create the Hall of Peace in Auroville’s Unity Pavilion, home of the Peace Table envisioned by her father. The other Peace Tables are in New York and Moscow. Her additional statement is reproduced below.

Statement by David Stein

I would like to add my personal considerations to the Statement from the two members of the International Advisory Council for Auroville.

I am the author, along with my wife, Prof. Achva Benzinberg Stein of the City College of New York, of the Green Belt Master Plan for Auroville which was completed in 2013 at the request of the Town Development Council (TDC).

In preparing the GB Master Plan, our chief considerations were the introduction of further environmental and ecological measures to protect the land within the boundaries of the approved planning area, including management of the water storage system for the benefit of both Auroville and the neighboring villages.

As is well known within the region of Auroville, water supply is a major issue for both agricultural and domestic needs, as the only source of potable water is groundwater, now being threatened by overuse and the resulting saline intrusion into the Kaluveli aquifer, the sole source supporting a population of over 10 lakhs.

Protecting the existing tree coverage created by the reforestation in Auroville is critical as is the protection of the water catchment systems, including both the natural and the man-made ponds that were created over the past centuries and in the past 70 years enhanced by the work of Auroville’s residents.

In our opinion, the rigid implementation of a theoretically conceived plan made without any regard to natural conditions would be a serious error and would damage not only all the areas within Auroville but also the entire Kaluveli basin, the home and source of income for more than a million persons.

We would urge the Board to reconsider its recent actions in rigidly imposing a road system that fails to protect the environment and threatens the livelihoods of the entire region.

Statement by Mira Nakashima

I am shocked, no, horrified at what is now happening in Auroville, which I have always admired as an international community devoting their energies to building an idealistic new society, developing cutting-edge sustainable energy technology, preserving and developing natural resources, respecting the rights of all human beings, creating beautiful, sustainable architecture, new art forms and a new human consciousness.

The current administration seems to have disregarded all the hard physical as well as spiritual work which painstakingly transformed a barren desert into an oasis of verdant forests, gardens and organic farms, housing and education for people of all nations, carefully respecting the native communities so they would not disturb their culture and well-being.

To have decades of inspired planning and implementation of this New Society senselessly bulldozed to the ground in the name of “progress” seems at best a demonstration of the materialist megalomania which Aurovilians have gathered from all corners of the world to avoid.

Auroville was founded by Mirra Alfassa as a City of Peace; Mother and her architects envisioned and designed that City and that Peace which is now being wantonly destroyed, and I don’t know how to stop them, but they must be stopped!

My father, George Nakashima, became one of the first disciples of Sri Aurobindo in 1938, as he was building the first reinforced concrete building in India, and thought he would spend the rest of his life there because the way of life was so idyllically peaceful. I can only hope and pray that the spirits of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother may become manifest to those who are destroying Auroville so they stop the destruction of one of the most beautiful cities on the planet Earth.

~ Mira Nakashima January 24, 2024