Commemorating the second caravan

Just over 50 years ago, on 20th December, 1974, thirty five young people, mainly French, sat in a circle on the grass in Aspiration, blinking in the bright Indian sun. They had just arrived after an epic two month journey of 13,000 kilometres which had taken them from France, through Italy, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan to India. Now they were listening to Alain Bernard informing them about their lodgings, which had been specially created in Aspiration and other places to receive them.

This was the ‘second caravan’, the second time a caravan of young people had journeyed overland in various vehicles from France to Auroville.

The adventure had begun some months earlier when Jean-Claude Bieri, one of the Auroville pioneers, had returned to France to organise a caravan to bring new people and much-needed equipment to the fledgling community. He contacted the Auroville International France Association for assistance, and they played a leading role in catalysing and organising the project. They informed friends and contacts of the Association and soon 20 people came forward to pay the 1000 francs per adult, 500 per child, for the overland trip to India. In those days this was a very popular mode of passage and destination, fueled by the spirit of freedom and adventure that was in the air.

A Mercedes bus and other second hand vehicles were purchased, modifications made, and on the evening of the 10th October, 28 adults and 4 children left Paris.  

The ‘caravanners’ were a motley collection of individuals. Some were inspired by the vision of Auroville, and were looking forward to joining the experiment. Others were simply looking for adventure and a chance to see exotic places and experience different cultures. And there were plenty of these. As Christine, one of the caravanners, recalled 40 years later, “We camped along a stream in Yugoslavia in a cold, damp fog, and were chased away by policemen who took us for a travelling circus. We sang around a campfire with kids from Anatolia; we tasted caviar washed down with vodka with an aide-de.-camp of the Shah on the shores of the Caspian Sea. We negotiated with Afghan authorities to get them to release two drivers of the J7 van, prisoners near Herat after having run over a peasant. We toured the bazaars of Istanbul and Kabul and politely refused to trade one of the girls for 50 camels. We drank Turkish coffee on the shores of the Black Sea, ate Yugoslavian yogurt that tasted like cement, Iranian nans as big as carpets…. We camped at the foot of the Taj Mahal, in the middle of the temples of Khajuraho and prayed in the sacred dust of Brindavan.”

Inevitably, given that they were such a mixed bag of individuals, tensions surfaced. Some wanted more sightseeing, others wanted to get to Auroville as quickly as possible. A few did most of the chores – the driving, cooking, washing up, cleaning, and negotiating with the authorities – while others only turned up for meals.

“There were the professional protesters,” remembers Christine, “who wanted daily meetings and who argued about whether decisions should be taken by a relative or absolute majority; there were the reasonable ones who tried to discipline the undisciplinables; and then there were those who were stubbornly silent.”

In other words, they already represented a version of the community they were coming to. In fact, as Paul Pinthon put it later, “The caravan helped us, prepared us, for what we were coming to. I took the caravan as a tool to learn, because I knew it was a kind of mini Auroville.”

However another caravanner, Gundolf, was better prepared for Auroville: he had travelled overland and arrived here in February 1973. “At that time I had expected to encounter a very different kind of society. But when I arrived I was disappointed because I thought that the people here would be so amazing, and they were not. It made me realise that we all carry our ’baggage’ wherever we go, and my job was to transform something inside myself. So it was with this understanding that I came the second time.”

Many of those who came with the caravan left soon after arrival: they had only come for the adventure and the sightseeing. But a few stayed on and are still with us.

So what was the significance of this odyssey? Paul Vincent was clear. “It would be the seed that would form the body of the revolt of Auroville against the oppression of the so-called ‘leaders’ and ‘owner’ of Auroville in 1975. If these people had been able to predict what would happen, they would never have allowed us to come to Auroville.”

Christine remembers that Alain said that before the caravan arrived, the Aspiration community was ‘sleeping’. “He said we brought fresh new energy and this was the core of the revolution against the Sri Aurobindo Society.” Paul Pinthon agreed. “We were full of enthusiasm, we were new, we were fresh. In that sense the second caravan brought young blood in order to participate in the fight with the Society.”

But the caravan was not just important because it imported the student spirit of May ’68, the spirit of protest, into Auroville. “We are commemorating the caravan today,” continues Christine, “because it touches the very aim of Auroville, which is adventure: it was a jump into the adventure. For example, when Hervé arrived on the day of the departure from Paris he just left his car in the street below the Association office. For him his old life was finished.”

Claude feels it is also important for others to learn about the caravan. “The other day we spoke about it to the kids from the school . It was a revelation for them to realise how we journeyed on that adventure for them – and perhaps many others who have come more recently – know hardly anything about the history of Auroville.”

Auroville today is a very different place. Is that sense of adventure still alive for the caravanners who are still here?

“We are now experiencing the most dangerous adventure we’ve ever had: we don’t even know if Auroville will exist two years from now,” says Christine. “We want to create a society based on something higher than socialism and all the other ideals, which is why we have all the difficulties.”

Gundolf is hopeful. “This is an adventure, an experiment, and we don’t know how it will end. I think there will be a moment, hopefully sooner rather than later, when the sun will shine through the clouds again because the aim of this place is so amazing, so important for the world, that it cannot be allowed to fail.”

“I have never regretted for one second having come for the adventure,” says Claude, “and it is still an adventure, although a very different one. But when you go through difficulties, life is much richer. And, along the way, we met fantastic people, like the Dalai Lama, Indira Gandhi and JRD Tata. I could never have experienced this if I’d remained a dentist in France.”