On Auroville 2022 to 2025

- -17: 15-02-2025 : « In conversation with AV Today: - „ Time for integration.

(Divakar reached the Sri Aurobindo Ashram on December 2nd, 1969; a week later, he saw The Mother for the first time. On April 9th, 1970, his 20th birthday, the Mother gave him the name, Divakar , one of several Sanskrit names for the sun. For some time, he lived both in Forecomers and in Pondicherry before moving finally to Auroville. In November 1973, he joined the work of building the Matrimandir, and for many years was extensively involved in its construction and management. Recen tly he circulated a paper entitled „Auroville and its destinies‟ in which he suggested a possible way forward which seeks to integrate the present reality as a way of continuing our collective progress.) Auroville Today: In your paper you write that it is necessary to take a “step forward for us all to ensure the continuation of this experiment”. Do you think that the continued existence of Auroville is under threat? Divakar: Inwardly I don‟t feel that Auroville is in any danger. But the Auroville that we have come to know is disappearing, so we have to move to a position wider than where we are now so that we can find a way that the spirit of Auroville, the guiding force of Auroville, will integrate what is here on the ground today. Today that is the central government. We cannot expect the central government to go away, because it has invested so much in this place. Even if there is a change of political party at the helm, the government will remain involved with Auroville. And if we look at our own history without bias we can see that we have actually done everything to make it easy for them to come in. We have opened all the doors by going to them for solving our problems and for financial support. So we are responsible for them being here. But when we asked the government for help when the management of the Sri Aurobindo Society (SAS) threatened to take over Auroville, they extricated us from that. Wasn‟t this a positive intervention? When Mother left, nobody knew what to do, nobody was able to assimilate what was happening, and that led to the conflict with the SAS. That conflict was solved in the only apparent way that was available then, which was to call in the government. But from the moment we did that, what is happening today was, to some extent, bound to happen. But Kireet Joshi went ahead with the creation of the Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research (SAIIER) with government support because he was hoping that getting the government involved would be positive for Auroville, and a way of sharing our research with the world. In fact what I‟m proposing is, to certain extent, what he had in mind. Auroville, with the Government‟ collaboration, could provide a platform to share its research

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