My experience of Satprem

I refused to contribute to any sort of cultural imposition or dominance.

Even if certain traits of the culture of France, as certain of its acquired values, conferred to it a vanguard role. I reflected that it must be acting in the whole world amidst all the streams of influence, but that in Auroville it was for each person to assimilate, identify and offer to the collective experience the best of one’s culture, without in any way trying to enforce it as superior, even while one had to apprehend and welcome in oneself the input of all the other cultures and approaches represented. Satprem, insofar as the intensity of his work allowed it, used to make himself available to anyone wishing to address him but, as most of his assistants and aides had come from the same French group, there inevitably was an imprint. Moreover, perhaps as a movement of motivating encouragement, he would often reinforce a sort of group romanticism, not heeding the exclusivism which it might generate and feed, to the detriment of a larger and more inclusive cohesion. (One, here, could almost refer to an old technique consisting in complimenting those whose loyalty one seeks to ensure, giving them the sense of their own crucial importance in the evolution of the work, while identifying for them those others whom one must distrust… a tactic, if there was one, which would leave not a few ugly scars in not a few of us…). Besides, the very fact that the original text of the Agenda could not be translated and published in English at the same time contributed to feed a feeling of “heroic” lineage amongst the Frenchies and their associates, only digging deeper the distance from … “the others”, particularly the Anglo-Saxons, in whom an innate decency and a certain reserve towards any form of fanaticism forbade the tempestuous or inconsiderate opinionated positioning that seemed to be demanded if one hoped to be “accepted”. Without saying it, or even thinking it, it was indeed as if this group demanded the power over every decision concerning the future of Auroville.

48