Paul Pinthon

Auroville has a striking new art gallery – Maji. Located in the compound of Maroma, which is sponsoring the initiative, the first exhibition, ‘Petals’, opened in February 2025 and featured artists from the project’s first ceramics residency.

Last December, there was a photographic exhibition in the Tibetan Pavilion which celebrated the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the second caravan in Auroville.

On March 26th, the Auroville Press in Aspiration community celebrated its 40th anniversary. Claude Arpi, Christine Devin, Luisa Meneghetti and Jayalakshmi look back at a challenging past and forward to an uncertain future.

In the late afternoon of April 25th, Roma Hira peacefully left her body at her home in Dana due to renal failure. She would have turned 73 in September this year.

Alain Bernard first came to Auroville in 1972. Since then, he has been involved in many key areas, including the economy, education, the Press and, most recently, Village Action and the Sustainable Livelihood Institute.

Mother gave broad and clear directives that form the basis of Auroville’s socio-economic organization and vision: a communal economy with no private property and no exchange of money between community members, each of whom would contribute to the collective in one of three ways – work, kind, or money – and whose basic needs, would, in turn, be provided for by the community.

In early 1974 an Aurovilian, Jean-Claude Bieri, who was on a visit to France, suggested forming another caravan to take a large number of people to Auroville.