Auroville's monthly news magazine since 1988

The challenges of bringing out Auroville Today

 
This issue of Auroville Today marks 36 years since our first issue was published in November, 1988. That issue also came out at a difficult moment in Auroville’s history. The Auroville Foundation Act had just been passed, and there were concerns regarding what a fuller government involvement in the community’s affairs would mean.

At that time, the only media outlet to the outside world was the Auroville Review. However, this was coming out irregularly and not covering what was happening in Auroville in any detail. This made it difficult for the Auroville International Centres, in the pre-internet era, to provide accurate and up-to-date information on what was happening here to people who were considering visiting Auroville, or even relocating here from their home countries.

Therefore Auroville Today, as its name suggests, began with the aspiration to cover whatever was happening in the community. Among other things, this meant not only reflecting people’s higher aspirations, but also trying to represent the different viewpoints Aurovilians hold rather than being the mouthpiece for a particular orientation. As our first editorial put it,

Our attempt in this new magazine is not to try to define but to provide a forum, a meeting-place for different perspectives and views…

While not seeking an artificial balance or suggesting equivalence between different views, for clearly there are times when certain views command greater community assent, our aim was, and is, to provide readers with sufficient information for them to make up their own minds concerning what is happening here. Even when our writers strongly disagree with interviewees’ viewpoints or are uncomfortable about presenting possibly controversial notions, we still feel that the community has the right to understand those viewpoints.

This is challenging. It’s not just the fact that Aurovilians hold a bewildering variety of views on many topics. We soon discovered that we could not run Auroville Today like a normal magazine. Outside, a journalist can conduct an interview and then ‘spin’ it however he or she likes. That is not possible for Auroville Today which depends upon us being trusted by those with whom we share our daily lives. Consequently, before publication each interview is fed back to the interviewee, who has the full right to refuse its publication, or make corrections and changes as she or he deems necessary.

The advantage is that the article fully represents what the interviewee wants to share and the whole community knows that the interviewee stands by their words; the disadvantage is that important parts of the original interview are sometimes deleted or severely watered down by the interviewee, making it difficult at times for the reader to ascertain what he or she truly thinks or stands for. Outright refusals to be published, though rare, sometimes take place at a late stage in our monthly publication cycle, leaving us with the predicament of filling the space.

Then there is the challenge of writing for a diverse readership which has varying understandings of the nature of this experiment in consciousness evolution. For Auroville Today is read not only by Aurovilians, by the Governing Board and by Auroville-connected people around the world, but also by those in government offices and in embassies in India.

These are just some of the challenges we have been facing monthly for the past 36 years. However, it is particularly challenging to publish today when emotions in the community are running high, and some are eager to promote their views while others are much less so. In fact, representatives of the perspective which currently wields a great deal of power often don’t disclose information about their intentions and motivation. The dearth of crucial information, along with the fact that the small Auroville Today team lacks the means to do investigative reporting or comprehensive fact checking, results in us being accused at times of publishing misleading or incomplete information, or of favouring a particular orientation by publishing only information from the perspective which wants to be published.

Additionally, although we generally try to provide differing perspectives on a contested topic within the same issue, the different interviewees may not be available within our monthly time frame, or may not have approved the article in time for our monthly deadline. In such cases, different perspectives may be offered in the following issues. When the ‘balance’ of our coverage is viewed only on a per-issue basis, this also leaves us open to accusations of bias.

Of course, the editors of Auroville Today have personal opinions. Sometimes these are expressed under their own name in the ‘Reflections’ or ‘Open Forum’ sections. But, when it comes to covering what is happening in the community, as far as possible we try to set our personal preferences aside to provide a true picture and make Auroville Today a ‘meeting-place for different perspectives and views’.

There are dangers in this. It can lead to confusion or to the hardening of party lines. But it can also lead to people gaining insight into views very different from their own. This can help broaden perspectives and dismantle the barriers which we erect between us when we feel that our strongest beliefs are threatened by those who think differently.

And this could be a small, yet significant, step towards the human unity which we all, in our deepest hearts, aspire for.