Communication

One of the many things which have changed in Auroville over the past four years is the contraction and virtual disappearance of public discourse, meaning the free exchange of ideas and perspectives between Aurovilians in a public forum.

In early September 2025, a number of long-standing residents and duly-appointed community representatives received emails from the AVFO’s ‘Admissions and Termination Scrutinizing Committee’ and ‘Admissions and Terminations Registry’.

Dear Residents of Auroville, This month we complete our four-year term as members of the International Advisory Council of the Auroville Foundation.

On 13 August, the managers of Annapurna Farm received an email signed by three working groups constituted by the Governing Board – the Funds and Assets Management Committee, L’Avenir d’Auroville (Auroville’s Town Development Council) and the Farm Service – stating: “It has been decided to allocate 100 acres of Auroville land at Annapurna for the IIT [Indian Institute of Technology, eds.]

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.

Chali reflects on the fractures within Auroville and on the possibilities of restoration.

Heartweaving is quietly bringing together Aurovilians with different perspectives to manifest possible ways forward through sustained inner work.

In October 2024 we interviewed Dan Capdeville who launched the “Seeking Our Inner Being” project in January of that year. Now, one and a half years later, he has decided to formally close it down.

Four years into this crisis, I find myself searching for clarity on how we move forward. Yesterday, I came across a series of writings by Shannon Willis on Soft Rebellion that articulated what many of us have been intuitively practicing all along.

Michael Sandel, the Harvard professor, believes that many of us now live in a ‘market society’ where market values have supplanted other forms of human value like fairness and justice.

On 20 March, the Ministry of Education, responding to two Right to Information requests dated 25 and 26 February, sent the applicant a copy of the Minutes of the 68th Meeting of the Governing Board (GB) of the Auroville Foundation held on 5 December 2024, which have since been widely distributed in Auroville.

On 20 April the Working Committee selected by the Residents’ Assembly (RA-WCom) shared with the community a letter it had written on 16 April to the members of the Governing Board, copied to the members of the Auroville International Advisory Council.

In the previous issue of Auroville Today we published the major considerations and decisions of the Governing Board as reported in the minutes of its 67th Governing Board meeting held in Auroville on 31 May 2024.

On 27 February 2025, at the invitation of Mr. Koshy Varghese, a group of seven residents met with the Secretary, the OSD, Dr. Seetharaman, and the consultant for visa matters, Mr.

“In absolute silence sleeps an absolute power” — Sri Aurobindo, Savitri Sometimes I feel I am drowning in words. And not only mine. For it seems that every day someone in Auroville is bombarding us with words, telling us what to think, to do this and not to do that, to listen to them and not to others.

Residents of Felicity and Happiness, two outlying communities having a population of about 20 to 30 residents, have informed the RA-WCom that they are facing challenges since they learned in March of this year that a prime parcel of land of approximately an acre and a half which faces the old Auroville Road had been exchanged for land in the Master Plan area.

By letter dated April 9, 2024, the RA-WCom requested the Secretary of the Auroville Foundation to hand over the management and credentials of the domain auroville.org.in and its associated Google workspace to the RA-WCom, which both were set up by members of the Residents' Assembly to enable the Residents' Assembly to fulfil its duties of day-to-day management of Auroville.

One thing is evident at present: there is a complete breakdown in communication between those who favour the present developments and those who, for various reasons and to varying degrees, oppose it.

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.

“We do not belong to the past dawns, but to the noons of the future.” At 09.30 am on Sri Aurobindo’s 151st birthday, Manoj Pavithran premiered ‘Sri Aurobindo: A new Dawn’ in Bharat Nivas.

H.P. Rama is a successful hotelier based in the U.S. He is also a devotee of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and has founded a university – AURO University – in Surat based upon the former’s educational principles.

The Hon’ble Governor of Tamil Nadu and Chairman of the Governing Board, Shri R N Ravi, visited Auroville on 18th and 19th of October, 2022. He was welcomed by the Collector, Mr.

In 1959, the physicist and novelist C.P. Snow gave a famous lecture in Cambridge in which he distinguished two cultures: the scientific and the intellectual literary cultures.

Auroville and local youth are being trained in the Y-PEER methodology by the Auroville Peer Education Network (APEN) that enables them to help their peers deal with the challenges of life here.

I recently returned from several months at my university in the UK dedicated to writing up my doctoral research on Auroville, and a series of related presentations in various academic conferences throughout Europe and the United States.

Dave Storey is an Aurovilian with a background in humanitarian and development aid. Recently, he announced that he was planning to run a course with Auroville Consulting on the theme of ‘Towards Resilience in a Messy World’.

The way we present Auroville through films and exhibitions is overwhelmingly positive. Little or no attention is paid to the challenges, dissonances, even contradictions that we encounter every day here.

Ross A. Elliott left his body on June 23rd in PIMS at the age of 73, after a struggle with bladder cancer that took him through several hospitals since March this year.

While it is one of the youngest Auroville communities, Courage is one of the largest. It has 104 residents drawn from 16 different nationalities: 30 of the residents are under the age of 18.

It is this ‘decisive action direct from the Supreme’ and it alone that makes possible what used to be impossible. It is by tuning to this new and higher consciousness which has descended that the Aurovilians were able to be Mother’s instruments – and will continue to be her willing servitors.

Sri Aurobindo spoke of free speech as being “an essential requisite for promoting and guarding the true well-being of the people”. The issue of free speech and expression in Auroville has simmered away beneath the surface for many years.

In a quiet and shaded enclosure in the Evergreen Forest, a small herd of horses flick their tails while sipping cool water in an effort to beat the ever-increasing summer heat.

Auroville Radio celebrated its 11th anniversary on December 5th this year. Despite their busy schedule in the months of November and December, and having to help set up Peridar Kaala Vaanoli (‘Radio in the Time of Extreme Calamity’ in Tamil), a temporary emergency FM radio station for the flood-hit Cuddalore, Andrea and Renu share their stories from Auroville Radio.

“Death is the question Nature puts continually to Life and her reminder to it that it has not yet found itself.” (Sri Aurobindo in “The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth”)

Outreach Media plays a crucial role in how Auroville is communicated to the larger world. How does it function and what are the challenges it faces?

Watching YouTube is often vexing. Downloading is slow, the wheel appears time and again and much fun fades in the waiting. Auroville’s telephone-based internet of 700-odd lines is limited in capacity and unsuitable for high speed internet access.

Restorative Circles, a system of conflict resolution which is based on the principles of Nonviolent Communication, is proposed to become part of Auroville’s Conflict Resolution Policy.

Gerald Frape is a social issues communicator who has been working for 35 years with government and non-government organizations on a wide range of social and environmental issues.

On August 15th, the new Auroville website was launched. It was the result of almost two and a half years of work. Manoj, who leads the technical team, first became involved with the Auroville website in 1998.

Some months ago a new introductory film on Auroville, Auroville: The City the Earth Needs, was presented to the Aurovilians. The film, which begins with The Dream and ends with the Auroville Charter, gives a brief overview of the main projects and activities, including Auroville’s outreach activities in the nearby villages.

The Auroville International (AVI) Centres held their biannual meeting in Auroville in February. After the meetings, some members of the new Board met with Auroville Today to discuss how they perceive their role, the main challenges facing them, and their hopes for the future.

Auroville has recently been hit heavily by the Communication Wave. The less sensitive may not have felt it so clearly, but the Really Advanced Aurovilians immediately recognised the special nature of this new vibe, and reacted to it, albeit in different ways.

The thing about a communication situation like Auroville’s is that since most information sharing is by word of mouth, what little remains to be recorded in print is only what isn’t worth the verbal interspersion.

“Auroville Today”. O.K.: It is not the most exciting title in the world. But we felt that “New World” or “Transformation” were a little, well, premature.