Issue Nº404 – News in brief

Late February is the busiest time of the year in Auroville’s cultural calendar. This year there was an ‘Auroville Festival’ which took as its theme the first quality of the Mother’s symbol – Sincerity. Through various activities, the first four days focused on the four powers of the Universal Mother – Wisdom, Strength, Harmony, and Perfection – and the remaining four days on four attributes we need to develop in ourselves –- Knowledge, Power, Abundance, and Self-giving. In addition, two days were dedicated each to Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, and Mahasaraswati. The festival is planned to be an annual event.

There were many other music concerts and recitals. They included a concert of sacred songs by visiting Australian soprano, Heather Lee, in the Amphitheatre, sacred music by the Auroville Renaissance Cappella choir under the direction of Eugeen Liven d’Abelardo, a performance of Tamiz music in Unity Pavilion, a Rudra Veena concert, and a Western classical piano recital by Harmut. 

There was a talk on Sri Aurobindo and Bharathiar’s poetry and a performance of Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ by the students of Deepanam School.

Flower enthusiasts welcomed the inauguration of Mother’s Flowers Garden in Mahalakshmi Park on 21st February, and some participated in the Hibiscus Art Festival and a flower mandala workshop at Savitri Bhavan. 

Exhibitions during this period included Within/ Without, a pottery exhibition by Rakhee Kane, and an experimental photography exhibition by the late Giorgio Molinari at Citadines; The Willow Tree at Pitanga; and Towards the Sun, a photo exhibition at Aurelec Cafeteria on the Pharaoh Akhenaten. Akhenaten, who attempted to make ancient Egypt worship only one god, the sun god, was strongly influenced by his mother, Queen Tiye, who, according to The Mother, was one of her previous incarnations. 

As usual, there was a collective meditation with dawn fire in the Amphitheatre on Auroville’s birthday. Later, people enjoyed listening to Savitri music as the sun set on the same afternoon. 

On 26th February, there was an informal community gathering with the South African activist and former minister, Jay Naidoo, in the Unity Pavilion. Jay Naidoo was a leader in the South African struggle against Apartheid, and Minister responsible for Reconstruction and Development in the country’s first democratic government, where he worked closely with Nelson Mandela. Aurovilians were interested in the insights he shared concerning how the divisive Apartheid system was overcome, as well as about the path-breaking Truth and Reconciliation process, with its rich learnings and challenges. Many felt the latter could offer valuable hints concerning how to resolve the present difficulties in Auroville. 

This is a yearly event organised by the Fertile community that aims to bring together local crafts people with the children of the Auroville bioregion and Tamil Nadu. The weeklong mela started on Sunday 19th February and ended with a fair. The featured crafts this year included macramé, basket-weaving, pottery, silambam stick fighting, upcycling, metal casting, rope making, leatherwork, stone carving, and wood carving. Every evening there was a programme with music and dance open to all.

Between 2nd February – 22nd March a festival focussed on stewardship for water and biodiversity is taking place as a call to action in the bioregion. February events were organized in various localities in the region to raise water awareness, concluding with events at the Auroville Visitors Centre. While water conservation and management is a top priority for Auroville’s development planning, Auroville’s water future is inextricably linked with the health of the larger bioregion.

The Ami/Evergreen land dispute case was heard in Tindivanam on 15th February, but the lawyers for the Land Board and the Auroville Foundation did not appear. The final hearing will be on 23rd March.

No dates have been set in the Delhi High Court and Supreme Court of India for the other legal cases with which Auroville is involved. 

The Wednesdays for Auroville meeting is planning to issue a ‘White Paper’ on Auroville’s way forward. A couple of papers have already been prepared outlining what has been realised in Auroville since its inception, and what is being planned on the foundation of these achievements. The meeting decided that rather than a single rigid plan, what is important is the vision and, emerging organically out of it, a ‘basket of projects’, based on the ground reality and keeping in mind that exploration is at the very core of Auroville. 

The RA TDC is moving forward with setting up a participatory planning process which is open for all to contribute to; the only rule of the game is for each to bring their goodwill, expertise and diversity into a shared approach and be ready to meet respectfully on middle ground. This process will pave the path to how our community will address many issues, with meaningful participation and carrying forward the work of the 2022, Dreamweaving and other previous planning works.

The team clarified that when they talk about “proper planning” they mean plans that are co-created with participative processes, agreed upon and endorsed by the RA; planning that takes the ground realities, the environment and the socio-economics into account; plans that enable the development of a city that is climatically appropriate and adaptive to climate change; and plans that respect the key features of the Galaxy vision model whilst ensuring enough flexibility for future generations to further develop the city, taking advantage of all discoveries from within and from the world. This, they say, would allow Auroville to become and remain the City the Earth needs.

At the beginning of November 2022, the AVFO’s ‘FAMC’ sent an email to several Activity managers whose annual turnover does not exceed 2 lakhs. The email stated “If you do not intend to develop your activity to the next level we suggest you close down your activity and work with any other unit with a similar scope of work to your activity”. A little over 3 months after this information was shared, several people received emails informing them their Activities would be closed on 31st March.

The FO FAMC is setting up an Integrated Information System as a digital memory for the collective. The AIIS office will be responsible for securing a fully integrated, updated data system with all the core data of the Auroville administration, and making it available to working groups as well as Foundation office.

The FO ATDC points out that most of the residences in the Gaia community are in the designated Mahalakshmi Park, even though one of these residences received building permission in the recent past. “Residences, houses and or motorised traffic are not appropriate in city parks, and the modalities to make this shift this will be looked into in the coming months; the residents of these city parks will be asked to make some changes in their lifestyle and their function within these areas, including but not limited to the use of vehicles within these parks”. 

As a first step, walking/cycle paths through the parks are being identified and their surface compacted with brick kerbs on either side. In future, says the FO FAMC, fences between houses in the park area will be removed entirely or else reduced to the bare minimum. 

The FO BCC reports that the overall costs for home care, including the care of Aurovilians (above the age of 60 years) at care homes and their residences, as well as the transport costs for hospital treatments, have increased by 44% at the end of the year.

Work is now going on apace to finish the Crown road, using RCC slabs rather than the paver blocks which were first experimented with. However, a study by the Auroville Earth Institute concludes that “The new road surfacing design approved by the Auroville Town Development Council appointed by the secretary for the surfacing of this road does not follow any Indian standard. Consequently, none of the technical specifications given by the CPWD has any precedence to ensure safety or durability.” Moreover, the production and transport of RCC slabs results in 610% more CO2 emissions per square metre than the original paver blocks made by the Road Service which have now been discarded. 

The Secretary, together with Dena Merriam and some participants in the Science and Spirit conference, held a tree puja in Darkali to pray for the spirits of the many trees which may be cut to make the Crown Road.

As part of a survey of the Galaxy Master Plan, the Central Public Works Department (CPWD), Government of India, has been marking and numbering trees. The standard procedure is to remove some bark and paint the number on the cleared skin of the tree. However, an Aurovilian arborist has pointed out that this is “a practice generally avoided unless you want to damage or kill a tree”. He advises that this work should be done, as had already been done in Auroville, using GIS which can very accurately geo-locate the position of each tree. It is reported that the CPWD is now adopting this approach. 

YouthLink has initiated a survey to understand Auroville youths’ relationship to work. They write, “Throughout the years we have heard many allegations, statements, and comments, ranging from ‘Auroville youth are lazy’ to ‘youth want to work but there is nothing to do in Auroville’. This survey will serve to give clear and accurate information on the current realities.”

For some weeks, the News and Notes editors have not been publishing reports from the main Residents Assembly working groups. A group of concerned Aurovilians drafted a letter to the editors saying, “We request you to publish announcements and reports from the working groups selected and endorsed by the Residents’ Assembly. If either or both of you are unable to fulfil your function on behalf of the community, and to uphold the spirit and values of the News and Notes, we request you to resign so that other residents may fulfil this role.”

The letter received 497 signatures in support. So far, there has been no response from the editors.

Organisation research

Responding to a call from the Auroville Council, a group gathered every week from mid November onwards to try to answer a “call for organisation”.They ended their exploration of the fundamentals by forming a first image of what could be the goal of our collective organisation. As the goal of Auroville is “Human Unity, Peace upon Earth”/Divine Anarchy, the goal of Auroville’s collective organisation could be “to foster the growth of our individual and collective consciousness so as to make it the aim of life”. 

The next steps will be exploring how to implement this goal in our collective organisation.

Two long-time Aurovilians have written letters to the Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi, in response to the Leave India Notice, appealing to the P.M. to intervene in the ever-escalating situation, for “Auroville is in great danger” as the “core values” of the experiment are being threatened. Residents are invited to add their signatures in support. The organisers say that, while the letters are addressed to the Honourable Prime Minister, they are also intended to be read by government authorities and the wider public to inform them of our situation and our appeal for help.

The community was deeply shocked to learn that a young Aurovilian and member of the Residents Assembly Working Committee, had been served with a Leave India Notice on 15th February. No official explanation has been given. However, The Auroville International (AVI) Board sent a letter to the Governing Board (https://evolvingauroville.us14.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e1149c843190d610f574f2df9&id=4b34bb8e9b&e=1ef10315b4), noting that the Notice raises “suspicion… that this serious measure is a retaliation for [Mael’s] commitment to the governance of the Auroville community.” The RA Working Committee reports that they are actively looking into the situation and are hopeful that compassion and reason will prevail, for “We have faith in the goodwill of Mother India”.

In light of the ‘Leave India’ notice, Aurovilians organised a choir event for 5.30pm on Tuesday 28th February at Solar Kitchen parking, where they invited everyone to get together and sing a song of hope for the future. Solar Kitchen provided dinner afterwards.