On Auroville 2022 to 2025

One of these trends had been prominent ever since the inauguration of Auroville and grew more pronounced with time: the one that clung to the image of the “ Galaxy ” as presented by the main architect and his team – an image that took many successive expressions but nonetheless remained central to a certain understanding of the “city of the future”. The Mother had advised to begin with the center of this “ city at the service of Truth ”, by building the Matrimandir; its construction was to a large extent an agent of cohesion and gathering of energies and efforts. However, the entire area of Auroville needed more and more care and attention, and so did the growing collectivity, with its myriad activities and necessities and reclamation of the land and its resources was a unifying enterprise that contributed to change this once desolate plateau into a vast oasis of verdant wealth, itself attracting more and more people and attention. The entire world was facing crisis after crisis as its population more than doubled and humanity‟s needs and wants increas ed with new technologies vying to control the damages caused by this race for comfort and its goods. Auroville is located partly on Tamil Nadu and partly on Pondicherry territories and the development of Pondicherry itself, its town center being only 10 miles away at most, grew in proportion at a rapid pace, with no plan and no control whatsoever, all around; the Auroville area became more and more attractive to land speculators and brokers, while more individuals or entrepreneurs became interested in creating their own secluded homes within the reach of the newly forested environment. The price of land shot upwards and jealousy, greed and rancor became rampant. Those who advocated the consolidation of the territory of the city-to-be as a first priority finally obtained from the Auroville Foundation that the clauses stipulating that no land should be exchanged or sold be modified, allowing lands lying outside the city plan per se be exchanged for privately owned lands within its perimeter. This had several consequences and effects: prices went further up in very little time, and the representatives of the community began to be approached and to behave as the „ owners ”. Everything acquired a “price”.

This actualized a breach in the inner reality of Auroville and it affected the protection that had prevailed until then, despite all human failures or pretences.

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