Auroville

Earth needsa place where men can live away from all national rivalries,social conventions, self-contradictory moralities and contendingreligions;a place where human beings, freed from all slavery to thepast, can devote themselves wholly to the discovery and practiceof the Divine Consciousness that is seeking to manifest.

Auroville wants to be this place and offers itself to all whoaspire to live the Truth of tomorrow.

Auroville is the ideal place for those who want to know the joyand liberation of no longer having any personal possessions.

The Mother[1]

The Auroville project was launched on August 14, 1964 at the first International Conference of the Sri Aurobindo Society in Pondicherry. It was conceived by a follower of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Navajata, (perhaps on the model of the Housing ‘Societies’ which are widespread in Gujarat?) as a township to be built close to Pondicherry where devotees could purchase housing plots and build homes for themselves so that they could live near to the Ashram. His dream was that this township would provide a model to the world of best practices in every field of life, based on the vision and teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

Navajata (Keshav Dev Poddar) was a businessman from Bombay who had become a devotee of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother as a young man in the 1940s. [obituary tributes in Mother India]..

In [the late 1950s – date?], with the Mother’s consent, he had launched the Sri Aurobindo Society along with 3 associates – MadanlalHimatsingka, ShyamSundarJhunjhunwala, and KishorilalDhandania. The children of all these men had been accepted into the Ashram School – The Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education – and the idea was to collect money in support of the school from devotees in India and abroad. A network of ‘Centres’ had been set up for this purpose, where gatherings were held to inform interested people about the lives, work and vision of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and to encourage them to donate. [see the Mother’s remarks in the Agenda and elsewhere]

The Mother, as President of the Sri Aurobindo Society, had sanctioned the launching of the project, named it, and given a message for the Conference, but it seems that at first she did not take any special interest in it. But in June 1965, this changed. [talks to Huta and Satprem]. Soon afterwards she appointed a chief architect, Roger Anger, and gave her first instructions and messages about the Auroville. The Sri Aurobindo Society (had already?) started purchasing land for the new township. [land purchase history] [early publicity]

Auroville’s Foundation Day was celebrated on February 28, 1968. The organisation for this big event was spearheaded by the Sri Aurobindo Society and the Ashram together, with the sanction and support of the Mother. Students from the Ashram school participated in the organisation, and were taken out in groups to start building a road to a solitary Banyan tree, which the Mother had designated as the centre of the new township. [Huta – The Inner Life]. The Indian Government had decided to officially sponsor the project and presented it at Unesco where a series of resolutions in support of it was passed over the following years.By this time Roger and his team had produced a concept town-plan and a planning office had been established.The ComitéAdministratifd’Aurovillehad been constituted and was functioning.

All these activities were based in Pondicherry, around the Ashram and the offices of the Sri Aurobindo Society, which had set up a special Auroville office next to the School building opposite the Ashram.

The Mother formulated the aims, ideals and objectives of the growing project in her messages, talks and letters, as well as in the Charterof the city, which she wrote in French, and which was translated into the languages of all the countries which participated in the Foundation ceremony, and read out on the occasion, as a handful of earth from each of them was deposited in an urn near the Banyan tree at the centre of the township. These texts form the basic guidelines for the experiment of Auroville, which was defined by the Mother as follows :

Auroville wants to be a universal town where men andwomen of all countries are able to live in peace and progressiveharmony, above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities.The purpose of Auroville is to realise human unity.

8 September 1965

The Foundation of Auroville was widely publicised around the world, and interested volunteers were arriving from around the world. If they were accepted by the Mother they would be given a place to live, allowed to eat at a communal dining room, and get basic necessities on request monthly under a ‘Prosperity’ system similar that that established by the Mother for the Ashram.By 1969 the first settlements on the land of Auroville were being started. [Janet, Howard, Bob and Deborah, Jocelyn, Gene …]. The attempt to bring a new kind of society into existence had begun.

This attempt was to be based on the vision and teachings of Sri Aurobindo, who already during the First World War had written about the need and the possibility for the emergence of a spiritualised society, expressing the next step in human evolution. [The Ideal of Human Unity, The Human Cycle, The Life Divine].

When the Mother was asked

How dependent is the building of Auroville uponman’s acceptance of spirituality?

she replied

The opposition between spirituality and material life, the division between the two has no sense for me as, in truth, life and the spirit are one and it is in and by the physical work that the highest Spirit must be manifested.

19 April 1968

The township of Auroville was intended to become the field for wide-ranging practical experimentation to manifest new social forms that could embody and express the aim of Auroville to manifest “a living embodiment of an actual human unity.”[2]A completely new kind of society was envisaged, based not on cultural or material values but spiritual and evolutionary ones, generating new approaches to education,economy, governance, habitat and ways of life. As the 50th anniversary of Auroville’s Foundation Day approaches, it is appropriate to attempt an assessment of the material and spiritual research that has been carried out since 1968.

Here is my personal evaluation.

At the outset it has to be frankly state that the actual state of Auroville 50 years after its launching, very evidently falls far short of the high aims set by the Mother in her texts A Dream, the Auroville Charter, To be a true Aurovilian, as well as in her messages for and comments on Auroville from 1965 to 1973. But does that mean that the high-pitched attempt has been a failure? Far from it.Let us look at each of the topics mentioned above, one by one.

Education

Economy

Governance

Habitat

Ways of Life

[1] MCW 13:202

[2]. The Mother, Auroville Charter, February 1968 (MCW 13:194)