Why the Real Struggle Here Is Not Political, but Psychological
Introduction: A Difficult Truth We Avoid Naming
Auroville was never meant to be comfortable but transformative. Yet a quiet truth hovers beneath our current turmoil, rarely spoken aloud. What is being presented today as a grand moral resistance by the Residents’ Assembly is, in reality, the activity of a relatively small coterie that is perhaps two to three hundred residents who are largely Western, carrying an old colonial reflex that never fully left the psyche. This reflex treats Europe’s problems as universal emergencies and everyone else’s realities as secondary. It arrives everywhere as helper, saviour, advisor, philanthropic conscience and convinced it has already figured life out. This reflex sits at the heart of Auroville’s present fracture.
Auroville is not collapsing because of external forces. It is being tested because its inner contradictions have reached the surface.
The End of an Informal Empire
For decades, this group enjoyed an informal but absolute authority inside Auroville. This authority was not granted by the Charter, nor earned through collective mandate. It emerged through cultural dominance, access to resources, language power, legal familiarity, and the unspoken deference foreigners historically carried in India.
That era is ending. India has changed. Auroville cannot remain a museum of an old power structure sustained by nostalgia and moral exceptionalism. What we are witnessing now is not a spiritual uprising. It is a prolonged attempt to reclaim a lost monopoly.
Political manoeuvres are dressed as spiritual concern. Media campaigns are framed as safeguarding the Mother’s vision. Legal offensives are presented as protection of autonomy. All are aimed at weakening the Governing Board and the Secretary because their presence represents an uncomfortable truth: absolute resident control is over.
Optics, Proxies, and Fear
This group rarely acts alone. Ten to twenty Indians and a few local Tamils are placed in front of cameras, court petitions, and press quotes. Optics matter, and accusations land differently when spoken by brown faces. Behind the scenes, strings are pulled elsewhere.
Inside Auroville, this is not a secret. It is spoken quietly because speaking openly invites social exile. Selective quoting of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo has become a craft. Passages are lifted when convenient and ignored when they demand discipline, surrender of ego, or collective order. The same texts that speak of obedience to Truth and subordination of personal will are rarely invoked.
The Forgotten Majority
For fifty-seven years, this approach produced a strange outcome: pioneers on a pedestal, and everyone else as secondary characters. Pioneers as authors of Auroville’s destiny while the others as guests, labour, footnotes, or problems.
In that process, a far larger story disappeared. Nearly thirty thousand people came to Auroville over decades with sincerity. Many left quietly bruised, disillusioned or exhausted. Their stories are never told. And the narrative focuses only on those who remain, as if endurance equals virtue. It does not. Sometimes endurance simply means one learned how to survive dysfunction.
Yoga Is Inner Labour, Not Political Theatre
We did not come to Auroville to build spiritual résumés. The world outside offers faster rewards for ego.
We came because life here was meant to be a yoga: work as yoga, relationship as yoga, governance as yoga, and conflict as yoga.
Yoga is inner labour. Not political theatre. Yet what we see today are popularity contests disguised as collective processes. Campaigning for favourable candidates, media narrative management, gossip networks, social isolation of dissenters and anonymous letters signed as ‘concerned residents’. These are not spiritual tools. They are imported Western political habits. Historically, they belong to the same soil that produced fascist movements. We never examine this lineage but romanticise ourselves too much.
On Authority, Law, and Selective Memory
The Government of India and the Governing Board are appointed through constitutional processes. Residents have no role in choosing them. No mandate to approve them or authority to veto them. This arrangement was not imposed by outsiders. It was begged for by residents themselves in the 1980s, when internal conflicts spiralled beyond repair.
One cannot ask for intervention when convenient and reject it when inconvenient. Since 1988, the Governing Board has met regularly with recorded minutes. The Residents’ Assembly, by contrast, has largely operated through ad-hoc gatherings driven by personalities rather than structure where loudness became authority. Then the Secretariat is blamed for dysfunction that residents refuse to address.
On the Charter, the Master Plan, and Manufactured Ambiguity
Of course the Charter belongs to the Mother. Suggesting otherwise is silly. Equally silly is pretending that a civil servant misquoting a phrase proves moral collapse.
The Mother did not offer vague spiritual mist. During the inauguration, the Charter and the Galaxy plan were displayed near the Banyan Tree. She guided Roger Anger closely. Multiple iterations occurred. The final galaxy form was approved by her.
To claim she gave no direction on the city is historically incorrect. The Master Plan is a legal instrument translating that vision into Indian planning law. It was approved by the Residents’ Assembly in 1999 and the Governing Board in 2001. Claims of ambiguity are manufactured because ambiguity allows power to hide. Once details are finalised, following a plan is not dogma. Sabotaging it for private ideology or advantage is.
Ecology, Encroachment, and Convenient Narratives
There was no pristine forest here originally. There was a ravaged plateau. Some Green Belt areas developed dense vegetation. When someone builds a private mansion inside a planned green space and later calls it a sanctuary, that is appropriation, not ecology.
Farming was meant to support collective self-sustenance. Today it is largely individual enterprise. Before shouting about ruined farmlands, we might examine how much food we actually grow for ourselves. Tree-felling was legally challenged. The Supreme Court quashed the NGT order. That is a fact. Ninety-five percent of the Crown Road alignment already exists. Endless redesign debates serve only one function: delay.
Authority, Evictions, and Uncomfortable Realities
Authoritarian governance existed here for thirty years informally, through unaccountable resident elites. What we see now is formal authority replacing informal domination.
Evictions feel harsh. Yet red assets were encroachments. A red line had to be drawn. No foreigner anywhere in the world is allowed to occupy land indefinitely without compliance.
Visas are privileges. Not birthrights. Claims of three hundred forced departures remain unsubstantiated. Final authority lies with the Government of India.
Reputation, Cleansing, and Responsibility
Allegations of violence, drugs, trafficking, theft, and abuse are uncomfortable. Police records exist. Many incidents go unreported. Suppressing bad news for image management does not purify a collective.
Calling this demonisation avoids a harder task: cleansing.
Auroville’s reputation in the bioregion exists largely because of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Residents have contributed in mixed ways, some beautiful and some harmful. Village work is not charity. It is mutual learning. We rarely acknowledge what the bioregion has given us.
Conclusion: A Laboratory, Not a Protest Camp
Residents deserve to be heard only insofar as they function collectively for Auroville’s purpose. Neither as permanent opposition machines nor as individual power centres.
Auroville was never meant to be a protest camp. It was meant to be a laboratory of consciousness. If we remember that, many arguments collapse on their own. If we forget it, no number of rebuttals will save us.
Auroville is a battlefield, but not for land, roads, or governance. It is a battlefield to fight inner incapacities.
Auroville Resident.
