Auroville history

Auroville exists in more than one dimension – there is the occult as well as the material dimension – which makes it difficult to assess what really is most important or influential in terms of the community’s development.

On 14 August Dr. Karan Singh, who has been Chairman of the Governing Board of the Auroville Foundation for more than 20 years, briefly visited Auroville.

In 2018, Amrit published ‘Children of Change’, a memoir recounting his early life and the difficult years in Auroville when he and others chose not to take sides in the bitter conflict between the Sri Aurobindo Society (SAS) and the then-dominant Auroville collective.

It all started in September 1998. Jean-François and I were at home when a group of teenagers, familiar faces from the Auroville schools, walked in with a quiet determination.

A new website: Auroville Urban Planning and Development Repository has been created. This initiative, led by a group of Auroville residents, brings together hundreds of documents related to the planning and development of Auroville.

There are important questions to be asked regarding the population of Auroville. Firstly, who decided that the intended population of the township would be 50,000, and is this figure immutable, fixed, or can it be adjusted?

A group of resource persons, helped by research assistants and web developers have developed an on-line repository of documents pertaining to Auroville’s Urban Planning and Development.

The earliest mention of Auroville was in the monthly issue of the Sri Aurobindo Society (SAS) Information Letter of March 1965, where its General Secretary Navajata wrote: “You will be glad to know that the Mother has taken up the model township project.

The Residents of Auroville express their profound grief at the passing of eminent jurist Fali Nariman on 21st February 2024 who, on more than one occasion, helped the development of Auroville by acting in court or by giving valuable legal opinions.

This 280 page book is a tribute to Kireet Joshi composed by two of his close Auroville friends, Frederick Schulze Buxloh and Alain Bernard.

Over the past year, a small team – Pranav, Elaine and Aishwarya – has worked tirelessly to create an impressive website for Auroville Today which incorporates the latest technology and design features.

Long-term Aurovilians Gillian, Roy, Angad and Adil met in Adil’s house in late September. Angad and Adil are working potters, Roy a former potter and Gillian, Roy’s partner, ran a crafts workshop and has been active in promoting village clean up and cycle path initiatives.

Dr. Debashish Banerji is the Haridas Chaudhuri Professor of Indian Philosophies and Cultures and the Doshi Professor of Asian Art at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), San Francisco, where he also chairs the Department of East-West Psychology.

Deepika Kundaji is known in India for her work in seed-conservation and land regeneration. She is regularly called on to conduct training for farmer groups and to speak about her work.

In June, two members of the Funds and Assets Management Committee appointed by the Secretary of the Auroville Foundation (FO-FAMC) sent an email announcing that this FAMC will stop maintenance payments as well as the regular Forest budget to green workers from July onwards.

In our previous issue we devoted two pages to the Banyan tree, including a brief historical overview. Since then, a former Matrimandir executive has sent us something that he wrote in 2004, which provides additional details about the tree.

In the mid 1960s Roger Anger wanted to know the location of the geographical centre of the city to be. He brought a map to Mother and she indicated a spot.

Himal Jaiswal came to Auroville 45 years ago as a seven year old boy. Approximately two years ago he started working in the Matrimandir gardens.

As my partner and I were talking about the history of Auroville’s on-going crisis, she encouraged me to read a specific book chronicling the early days of Auroville.

In a few decades, perhaps, it will be clearer to take an account of what did we lose, what did we gain, and overall, what we did learn that will help us to take another small step together, collectively.

In November 1988, thirty-four years ago, Auroville Today began life, and this month marks our 400th issue. Peter Lloyd, one of our most loyal subscribers and a recent addition to our editorial team gives his reflection.

Nadia is a photographer, geographer, and has been the president of AVI-France for the last ten years. She first came to Auroville in 1973. In mid September, she presented some of her photos of Auroville from the 1980s at an exhibition at the Centre d’Art in Citadines.

The minutes of the 57th meeting of the Governing Board held in December last year mention the need for a more welcoming Entry Process to allow for a speedy growth of Auroville’s population to 15,000 by 2025.

The clearing of the Crown, Auroville’s main urban path, once again met with resistance after 25 years of discussion and waiting, on December 4.

It is always foolhardy to offer conclusions when the dust has yet to settle during a major turmoil or, when, indeed, controversy is still roiling the community.

The following is a selection of reminiscences about Kottakarai community in the 1970s by its members. These were first published in the 2020 Fall-Winter issue of AVI-USA Connect magazine.

Janet Fearn was one of the very first people to settle in Auroville. In 1997, along with her friend, Philip Melville, she decided to create a programme for Newcomers which would tell them about the early history of Auroville.

Fifty years ago the Mother described her visions of the Inner Chamber of the Matrimandir. A seed was planted, a Divine impetus was sent forth… The Lotus that is the Matrimandir would soon begin its slow emergence from the deep red earth of Auroville.

The Mother’s stay in Japan between 1916–1920 was not only of profound importance for her spiritual explorations, but might also have had a big influence upon the development of Auroville.

Twenty six years ago, the youth were looking for a new home as Ami, which had been a youth community for many years, was no longer a welcoming environment.

In order to best determine how the lake around Matrimandir should be constructed, a large test pond is being excavated, exposing layers of earth, gravel, sand and clay.

Pitchandikulam Forest has issued its 2019-2020 newsletter which includes: reflective musings on the 47-year old history of Pitchandikulam Forest; the story of a monograph on the Owls of South Asia; a report on Pitchandikulam Forest’s nursery which is responsible for the growing of around 20,000 seedlings a year to help re-establish the Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest (TDEF) in Tamil Nadu; a report on the Environmental Leadership and Skill Development Programme for 350 Rural Women; the work of Pitchandikulam Forest in building water retention landscapes and the restoration of the twin lakes of Siruseri Chennai; environmental artwork for Toyota Kirloskar Motors, Bangalore, on a 25-acres ECOZONE; and creating a master plan for an Ecopark/Nature lab and teaching space for practitioners of Restoration Ecology on a piece of land near Ousteri lake.

Many view the disruption caused by the lockdown in Auroville as an opportunity to radically transform our economy, governance, food provision systems etc. and a number of proposals to achieve this have already been made.

In the Indian satirical film PK, a humanoid alien comes to study planet earth. Something of an idiot savant, he naively questions the customs and dogmas of the human race (located firmly in India, in this case).

Paolo Tommasi passed away in JIPMER on July 16th due to the COVID-19 virus. He had just turned 92 years. Paolo was born in Ancona, Italy in 1928.

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.

On 1st January, 2020, Auro e-Books () published Auroville: Sun-Word Rising – A Trust for the Earth. This seminal work on Auroville’s early history was first published in 1979.

Manuel Thomas is a senior Chartered Accountant who works with Auroville groups and commercial units in various consultative capacities. He is also co-author with Henk Thomas of a history of Auroville’s economy, Economics for People and Earth: The Auroville Case 1968-2008.

Auroville is under attack, both from the outside and the inside. It started in February 2019 with the publication of the book Auroville – A Dream Hijacked, authored by Dr.

When Aurelec first started back in the early 1980s, it had no catering facility, only a small kerosene stove on which the cleaning lady brewed tea and coffee for the pioneer staff working there.

In the first issue of Auroville Today, way back in 1988, we said we would make it our mission to provide an overview of what is happening in the community in each issue.

The Auroville Archives was established in 1991 by Krishna Tewari. For many years it was located in a temporary space in Bharat Nivas but in 2018 it moved into a new building in the Auroville Administrative Zone and the team was expanded.

How can you encompass something as complex and as multi-layered as Auroville? You can’t, of course. But it may be easier to capture something of this extraordinary adventure through images than through words.

The Dawn of Auroville, which is published by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, is a book of early photographs along with an outline history of Auroville’s conception, inauguration and growth during the Mother’s lifetime.

Dr. Muthuvel Karunanidhi, a giant of Tamil Nadu politics who served five terms as Chief Minister and was the long-term President of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), died on 7th August 2018 at Kauvery Hospital in Chennai.

Amrit joined Auroville in 1969. Recently he wrote about his life and spiritual development before and during his residence in Auroville. As a member of the so-called ‘Neutral’ group, his account offers a very different perspective upon Auroville’s troubled history in the late 1970s and 1980s.