Towards Auroville

And now, what ?

Almost 49 years have passed.

As I write these pages, my laptop marks the date as 4/22/2022 – the 22 nd of April of the year 2022, and Auroville is experiencing what is perhaps its most crucial crisis; the year is also marked as the 150 th anniversary of Sri Aurobindo’s birth, which the present dispensation at the apex of the Central Government of India intends to celebrate demonstratively as a boost to its program of revival cum development. So far the Central Government was there as a protector, a guarantor and a benefactor; but it has recently shown signs of claiming the entire “project” as its own and being determined to manage it according to its criteria, with the help of its own machinery. Perhaps the fact that some of us have not only welcomed, but even invited this intervention out of their frustration with the lack of a unified vision for the outer development of Auroville, feeling entitled to do so as their service to its speedy materialization, has in the larger community taken on the character of a betrayal; it has reenergized the old divisive notion of “us and them”, and this has left everyone dazed and uncertain and prone to discouragement and doubt. So indeed, this would perhaps be a dual cause of distress: the heavy overtaking of a still fragile and fumbling collective balance by a blind exterior power fed with simplistic rules of engagement and conduct on the one hand, and on the other the consummation of a deep divide in our understanding or perception of the meaning and purpose of Auroville.

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