The Auroville population conundrum

The figure of 50,000 is an issue for those who doubt that Auroville could comfortably sustain such a number, and/or are concerned about the present attempt to use it as a lever to accelerate an increase in Auroville’s population, which is perhaps motivated by a statement in the Auroville Universal Township Master Plan (Perspective 2025) that the population of Auroville would be 50,000 by the year 2025. (However, that same Master Plan observes that “the normal process of demographic growth does not apply to Auroville” as only those who aspire to be willing servitors of the Divine consciousness are supposed to be admitted.)  

Interestingly, in September 1965, on Roger Anger’s first visit after Mother had offered him the opportunity to build the new city, he wrote in his first report on the new town,

We shouldn’t underestimate the impacts all sorts of things will have on the creation of a new town, which, estimated at 10,000 inhabitants at its beginning, which before thirty years may reach 100,000 – and in the future surely more.

As, till then, there was no record of Mother mentioning the size of Auroville’s future population, he must have noticed that on her 1965 sketch of the future town its diameter was more than 10 kilometres. (Note that when later he reduced the diameter of the Galaxy model from previous models to prevent the township fully overlapping two villages, he enormously increased the density of the township.)

But soon, as he later confirmed, Mother said that he should plan a city for only 50,000. In a 1996 interview, he mentioned that he had been prepared to plan a city for any number that she specified, but I think it (50,000) was for her the required number for the experiment to have a total reality. It also appealed to him as someone who was setting out to plan a city (and to do better than Le Corbusier had done in his design for Chandigarh, which Roger disliked).

It was a number which was far from being uninteresting in terms of environment, in terms of densification of cities. Because beyond that one loses the feeling of a small town and one enters into that of a mega-city. At 50,000 one still has contact with people and in visual terms one is still able to associate urbanisation to something one is used to.

Later, Roger was to identify this 50,000 are one of his ‘non-negotiables’ (along with the four zones, the Lines of Force and the Crown etc.) when it came to defining the key characteristics of the township.

However, during the last three years of her life, Mother became a lot keener on the quality of the Aurovilians than on their number. For example, in 1971 Shyamsunder noted that Mother said that:

“In Auroville she did not want number but quality. Twelve good people would be better than hundreds of stupid persons, and the next year she insisted, In Auroville I do not want many people. 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” (probably because at that time South Africa had just stopped people from the Commonwealth, including many Indians, from taking South African nationality after a certain arrival date).

So perhaps the figure of 50,000 is not quite so immutable, so fixed, as some people would suppose. For Mother was very flexible, willing to change how things should be in Auroville because she wanted the township to develop spontaneously, “with the full play of the unexpected”. It is why she was so concerned that her words should not be fossilised into dogma. You will say one day, ‘Mother has said this, Mother has said that’...and that is how dogmas, alas, are made.

Who is an Aurovilian?

Who, then, qualifies to be termed an ‘Aurovilian’? If one interprets ‘Aurovilian’ in a very broad way, and ignores Mother’s definition of the ‘true Aurovilian’ – who is probably, as yet, a member of a very rare species – then the obvious answer is either those who, in the early years, Mother allowed to live in Auroville or, later, successfully underwent the stipulated entry process.

However, some people suggest that the villagers who inhabit the Master Plan area should also be considered Aurovilians. This would mean that we are already well on the way to reaching a population of 50,000 (there has been no recent survey of the population of these villages, but the total is currently estimated at between 20,000–25,000).

Those who argue that the villagers living in the Master Plan area should be counted as Aurovilians often base it upon an early document, approved by Mother, which stated that “The first citizens of Auroville are those Tamil people who live on the soil of Auroville”.

Here some context is required. This document was written by Varadharajan who, in 1970, and with Mother’s blessing, had volunteered to live in Kuilaypalayam to build a bridge between Auroville and the villagers. Mother was particularly concerned about keeping a good relationship with the local villagers, writing to someone who had recently arrived that he should be very careful not to offend the people from the Tamil village.

“It has been very difficult for us to win their confidence, and nothing should be done that should make them lose this new-born confidence which is of capital importance…. They are your brothers in spirit. This should never be forgotten.”

However, in 1970 that confidence had been severely shaken because the villagers of Kuilaypalayam had heard that there were plans to compulsorily purchase 52 acres of their land for building Auromodѐle. They were not a big village and felt threatened by the people with whom they felt no connection and whose motives they did not understand. Some feared a new form of colonialism. They were also concerned that they would be relocated somewhere else, as had happened in the case of big government projects like the Neyveli township. This suspicion sometimes degenerated into violence: some of the early white Aurovilians had stones thrown at them by the villagers.

To address their concerns, Varadharajan wrote a note in Tamil which he sent to Mother through her son, André: She gave our note and our work a big Blessings, a special Blessings, says Varadharajan. The note assured the villagers that Auroville wanted to show a new way of life which would provide them with better employment opportunities, improve their standard of living, and provide new health and educational facilities. It also assured them that Auroville would not evict anybody from their homes because the Tamil people living on the soil of Auroville are “the first citizens of Auroville”.

But what did this mean?

Varadharajan later explained,

I think you should distinguish between two kinds of Aurovilians. There is the geographical Aurovilian, who is here because he is born here, and has a birthright to Aurovilian citizenship. And there is the other Aurovilian who has come here following the call of Mother… Each one has to become a true Aurovilian.

It is true that, at one point, members of the Comité Administratif d’Auroville (CAA), the first administrative body of Auroville which was set up by The Mother, thought of integrating the entire village of Kuilaypalayam into Auroville, “if they spontaneously ask for it”. But then, Varajadhan recalls, one of the Mother’s secretaries asked, “But are they ready?” and this made them pause. In any event, finally only six families from the village applied to be integrated – only six because it was rumoured in the village that anybody joining Auroville would have to convert to Christianity or Islam! Two families subsequently dropped out, so the process began with only four families, comprising 17 people.

But there was no question of them being admitted automatically simply because they lived in the Auroville area. Varadharajan had to send their photos to Mother (later he took them to meet her) before she approved them, which was the same process for anyone wishing to join Auroville in those days. 

It is worth noting that, while Mother was averse to creating rules for entry into Auroville emphasising, “Living in Auroville is a choice: you can choose a certain life. But once you choose one thing, some others become incompatible... At any rate, living in Auroville is an ACTION, a decision you make, an action”, what she expected of all applicants changed over the years. In November, 1966, she said simply,

“the goodwill to make a collective experiment for the progress of humanity is sufficient to gain admittance.”

But three months later she told Satprem,

“All those who wish to live and work at Auroville must have an integral goodwill; a constant aspiration to know the Truth and to submit to it; enough plasticity to confront the exigencies of work and an endless will to progress so as to move forward towards the ultimate Truth.”

In 1969, in answer to a question about what it means to live in Auroville, she replied “Striving towards the supreme perfection.” Finally, in 1972, she stated,

“I would like people to feel that coming to Auroville does not mean coming to an easy life – it means coming to a gigantic effort for progress. And those who don’t want to keep up with it should leave. That’s how things stand. I wish It were so strong – the need for progress, for the divinisation of the being, so intense – that those who are unable (unable or unwilling) to adjust to it would leave by themselves: “Oh, this is not what I expected.” ”

She also mentioned during an ‘Aspiration talk’ that “it would be preferable if individuals had made the ‘inner discovery’ before coming.”

Roger reported that Mother said that no conditions for the integration of the four families were to be laid down, except that those who owned land would have to sell it to Auroville, or rent it to Auroville on a long lease. Mother also told André that “There should be no compulsion to work, on the type of work, etc. If they are lazy, they can be so until they become fed up of being lazy.”

She specified that the integration of these families should begin on 7th August, 1970. But what exactly did ‘integration’ mean?

Mother confirmed that after she had accepted them, they became full Aurovilians, and they should be provided with all the facilities they needed “according to the possibilities of the development of the Township.” She was also not averse to them being provided with ‘guiding principles’ concerning how to integrate into Auroville: “Certainly it would be good if somebody was intelligent enough to do it and do it well.”

However, Varajadhan and others were concerned that some villagers would want to join Auroville only for economic reasons. How to communicate to them what Auroville is really about, the need for individuals to transform their consciousness?

Mother told him that the best way was education, but to educate them not by words and speeches but by example. “If you can get them to mix with your life and work, and they get the influence of your way of being, your way of understanding, then, little by little, they will change.” Varadharajan had been sitting at her feet when she said this, and he recalled that when she said, little by little, She bent down almost to my ear – as if to emphasise that the process of becoming a true Aurovilian would be a long and gradual one. Then She straightened up in Her chair and said, ‘And when they become curious and ask questions, then it will be time to answer and to tell them what you know’.

At the same time, Mother warned Western and non-Tamil Aurovilians against adopting a position of ridiculous superiority. “Those who are in contact with the villagers should not forget that these people are worth as much as you are, that they know as much, that they think and feel as well as they do. They should therefore never have an attitude of ridiculous superiority. They are at home and you are the visitors.”

Whatever one feels about the distinction between ‘geographical’ Aurovilians and those who have come here from elsewhere, it is clear that there is a deep interrelationship between those who have been accepted as Aurovilians and others who live in the geographical area of Auroville. For while we cannot know the occult influence upon those living in the proximity of this spiritual experiment, among other things we share the same land and face common ecological challenges.

In the early days, Aurovilians learned a great deal about farming from local farmers, and some of the early huts were inspired by the indigenous architecture of the villages. Aurovilians from elsewhere also came to respect and learn from certain aspects of Tamil culture. Auroville also had a profound influence upon the villagers, who encountered different ways of living and relating and new opportunities for employment, as well as the ability to learn new skills and set up their own businesses. 

Overall, Auroville’s influence has been for the better, but it can be argued that more could be done to aid the development of the local villages through, for example, helping the villagers improve the existing infrastructure and providing models for sustainable growth.

This is not a new idea. At one point, the CAA considered taking up a project to make the whole of Kuilapalayam a ‘model village’, but the approach seemed somewhat patronising, as it was not at all clear if the villagers would have had an important say in how their village was to be developed.

Today, such top-down development of the local villages is out of the question: the villagers must make their own decisions about how they wish to develop. But Auroville can be a valuable partner in this. Above all we should not see this as being an ‘add-on’, of minor importance compared to environmental regeneration or the building of the town.

For Auroville can hardly claim to be the ‘City the Earth Needs’ if it doesn’t also support the sustainable development of all who share this land.