Auroville is a unique community that emphasizes collective decision-making, shared resources, and mutual respect for each other’s rights. However, the community has faced challenges in recent years as some individuals have encroached upon Auroville’s assets, including positions and rights that were intended to be shared. This has led to a sense of inequality and resentment among some members of the community.
Continue readingSustainability in Auroville: Why We Need to Uncroach The Commons and Resources
Auroville, the experimental township in Tamil Nadu, India, was established with a vision of human unity and sustainability. However, in recent years, the concept of sustainability in Auroville has been challenged due to the encroachment of common resources and assets by a few individuals.
Continue readingThe Importance of Uncroaching Auroville’s Assets: A Call to Action
Auroville, the experimental township in southern India, was envisioned as a place where people from all over the world could live together in harmony, devoid of social, political and economic distinctions. The township was also meant to be an example of sustainable living, where people live a simple life, share resources and work for the betterment of the community. However, over the years, the concept of Auroville has been compromised by some unscrupulous residents who have encroached upon Auroville’s assets, such as common spaces, parks, workspaces, and even houses.
Continue readingA Conversation with Roger Anger
Including Luigi and Aryamani with Jacqueline
Auroville MOBILITY
Auroville, to be true to The Mother’s vision, will provide alternative forms of mobility to suit the needs for peaceful conditions throughout the
city area. Today’s type of environmentally polluting, hazardous, and high-speed motorized transport will no longer have its predominant,
overbearing position – the individual will regain his own spatial dignity. The layout of Auroville is ideal to develop a pedestrian-friendly city
10-point game results 00 – Introduction
INTRODUCTION TO THE TEN POINT GAME
Continue reading10-point game results 3 – Development of Community Life
3 Development of Community Life
3.1 NEED FOR BETTER COMMUNITY
3.1.1 To create again a community where we all feel home and part of a big family, beyond cultural, social, financial, racial differences. A community where our youth want to live when they grow adults, not because they don’t know where to go or what else to do, not because life is easier than in the villages, not because they don’t have the financial means or the educational background to live somewhere else in the world, but because the community has developed an atmosphere of growth, of adventure, of brotherhood that gives a special sense to their life
3.1.2 We as a community as a whole need to find our CENTRE. Why is it only, that when there are extreme cases like Sydo’s murder, that we all come together for a short while…that we feel bonded to one another, for a short while, and then everyone continues to live in his own way…what is lacking? what will bring us all together and keep us together, not just for a short while, but for years to come???? What, what??
3.2 COMMUNICATION BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS
3.2.1 Smile more… J
3.2.2 Respect for all, for Aurovillians old ones and new ones, Newcomer and Guests and their individuality
3.2.3 Invest more time in knowing and improving relations with our neighbours
3.2.4 Replace criticism by support + loving feed back
3.2.5 Increase communication within Auroville.
3.2.6 Be friendly with each other: No more grumpy faces!
3.2.7 Get people to loosen up –take themselves less seriously
3.2.8 I wish Aurovillians to inform themselves about each other without gossip, care about each other so that also the share of financials is easier
3.2.9 Build trust- through regular sharing of information
3.2.10 Better relation among Aurovillians (more unity)
3.2.11 Better communication between the Aurovillians.
3.2.12 Community wise consciousness – Family is unity
3.2.13 Personal contact with people.
3.2.14 Inter community interactions
3.2.15 We don’t know each other anymore. A systematic, periodic way of introducing new people to the existing community should be created. I would like to be able to hear people, both new and old, speak about what brought them here – their commitments, circumstances, vision. I’ve been here almost 9 years now and have always had the sense of not knowing what we had to work with, human resource-wise. Entry Group announcements of Newcomers in the N&N should include a photo and be much more substantial in terms of introducing people
3.2.16 More smiles and smiling.
3.2.17 Enhance inter Aurovilian communication.
3.3 LANGUAGE
3.3.1 Spoken English and Tamil
3.3.2 Get everyone really learning Tamil!
3.3.3 A compulsory fulltime crash course in Tamil language and culture for any person that is going to live in Auroville. A three month course 30 up to 40 hours a week could be considered. The situation of people living for ten years or more in Auroville without being able to put up with a single conversation in Tamil is really too much.
3.3.4 Give classes in Tamil to Tamil Aurovilians about life in a community, human unity and how to achieve it
3.3.5 More courses for languages – eg Tamil and English
3.4 METHODS OF COMMUNICATION
3.4.1 Radio Station (with 2 KM radius)
3.4.2 See to it that everything in “News and Notes” is translated into Tamil. Encourage Annemarie to free herself from self-censorship.
3.4.3 Invest in communication infrastructure – for rapid communication / feedback/ decision making.
3.4.4 Communication (telecom, internet, radio, TV, print …..etc)
3.4.5 A magazine called Vision Auroville
3.5 PLACE TO GET TOGETHER
3.5.1 Would be great if Auroville had a place where one could ‘hang out’ in the evening, chat with friends, have a good juice and a sandwich. Just a place for clean fun – we are so uptight due to all the work pressures.
3.5.2 There should be a place where all can meet casually for games, talk, videos, listening to music. Kosmos Kafe was a step in the right direction.
3.5.3 Places to meet, others than meetings or restaurants, to enjoy being together after the movie for ex., a convivial place, like the Kosmos coffee, that is not closing at 8.30PM… To share, to communicate, to drink a lemon juice, to dance on life music, etc… Even if it is just a place opened just once a week or a month, will be great.
3.5.4 Create place like cosmos café
3.5.5 Create a space for Kosmos – like activities.
3.5.6 Have public spaces for the youth (open beyond 9pm!)
3.5.7 Go on with more gathering “cosmos café type”)
3.5.8 Have a permanent meeting place in interaction and exchanges
3.5.9 Entertainment (restaurants, cafes, movies, theater, sports …. Etc )
3.5.10 A community centre to meet – like the Kosmic café.
3.6 WAYS OF COMING TOGETHER
3.6.1 More celebration, coming together with whole of AV
3.6.2 Collective festivals, Deepavali, Pongal, Christmas, New Year ,AV, Ma’s Sri Aurobindo’s B’day
3.6.3 Take steps to improve the quality of our communal life-community Eating, community games, festivals etc.
3.6.4 Music live once a week.
3.6.5 Develop outing from AV to other places in India.
3.6.6 More full moon walks, cycling trips and just walks around AV in day and night times.
3.6.7 Let’s build ring road together!
3.6.8 Community picnics, tours, outings, get-togethers with lunch, dinner, amongst Aurovilians, with friends of Auroville, with long term associates, etc.
3.7 TAKING CARE OF EACH OTHER
3.7.1 A way to take care of people, particularly youth who become psycologically unbalanced.
3.7.2 To bring about a greater caring for each other by creating a safe, homely, medically oriented and realistic approach and place for those of us who may be, temporarily, disoriented or otherwise in need of psychological care (this certainly in regard to our youth).
3.7.3 Parties with alcohol and drugs do incalculable harm to AV on many levels and a way must be found to stop them once and for all, whatever it takes, even if it involves not renewing the visa to the incoscients who organize them.
3.7.4 Encourage rather than discriminate against each other.
3.8 INVOLVE THE YOUTH
3.8.1 Mobilize and Auroville youth to take an active part in the management and realization of the city. That means how to motivate them to learn something useful for Auroville and to do it?
3.8.2 Youth gatherings.
3.8.3 See what more we must provide for the adolescent youth in Auroville and do it.
3.8.4 Kids go into dope. Can we arrange for them a group with a few adults who know how to use “the profit of smoking”? It could let kids not use “grass” as the way of wiping from the reality. Mauna has some Information.
3.8.5 Give youth responsibilities and bring them to the main stream.
3.8.6 To train the youth and children to become true Aurovillians for which adults should be role models
3.8.7 Read and explain Mother + Sri Aurobindo To the kids – explain to them the goal of AV; What it mean to change one’s consciousness, How to change one’s consciousness.
3.8.8 Channel the youth force
3.8.9 Support the youth rather than building retirement homes.
3.8.10 A light point for the game: The peacock’s population is exploding and destroying gardens and silence. Unfortunately the peacock is in India is a protected bird. May be as part of a new game, children can be rewarded if they can find and collect their eggs!!?
3.8.11 Craft training for AV youth.
3.9 SECURITY
3.9.1 Security (especially in the evening/nights and holidays) also more security for women (example. Eve-teasing by locals and etc..
3.9.2 Finally an idea could be picked up form Holland as regards the crime situation. There in the 250, 000 Citizens city of Almere, the safety situation had been deteriorating over the years. Finally a mediation group did an offer to the Town Council. They promised to bring down the crime rate with 25% meditating each week on bringing down crime. They got a place somewhere in the centre of the city and in fact they brought down crime by meditating on it and nothing else. The experiment worked and has been going on ever since.
3.9.3 Security (No police!! internal or alternative presence)
3.9.4 Better security (though I feel this is now being implemented )
3.9.5 Auroville guards – training, replace MM guards, etc
3.10 OTHER
3.10.1 Provide opportunities for meditation at MM and silence………..
3.10.2 Summer exodus.
3.10.3 We have become too Tamil in composition, which limits possibilities for all of us (including the Tamil Aurovilians).
3.10.4 Reduce the flourishing materialism in AV.
3.10.5 No more junk food!
On drugs and alcohol in Auroville
Excerpt from a conversation with Satprem
Continue readingLet’s move on
Now that there is sufficient evidence and testimony of eyewitnesses that there was a concerted and planned conspiracy of a few people to block the master plan of the Auroville Township, now that the obstructions placed by the small group of people have been removed I believe the root cause of the cancerous division within Auroville is now no longer there and therefore as I see it –ITS TIME TO MOVE ON.
It’s time to move on from the self-destructive course that we find ourselves in. It’s time to move on from the division that we find ourselves in between those who support the work of the secretary and those who find in her a challenge to their own authority and power play.
It’s time to stop vilifying Auroville in the social media and with all well-wishers of Auroville. It hurts nobody except ourselves, it hurts the goodwill which is very necessary to the existence of Auroville.
It’s time to realize that while we may have many different ideas on any topic, and that such diversity of ideas can be encouraged, but when it comes to action there can be only one action .
It is time to understand that if we have differences of opinion on which course of action to follow then such differences can be resolved as things stand under the provisions of the Auroville Foundation Act which empowers the governing board to have a final say. The GB have made it amply clear that they want to implement the master plan in collaboration with the Aurovilians. Let us not treat the governing board as a foreign entity but rather as a support system created by the government for Auroville. To try to exert our own power as superior to the power of the governing board is to engage in a wrong and losing battle. It seems to me that such a battle serves only the power instincts of our local politicians.
It is time for our politicians to see the change of wind, to see that the Mother wants a shift of gear in the course of the development of Auroville and to learn to change with changing times. It is time for our politicians to acknowledge the power of the MOTHER.
The 2 politicians engaged in fighting with the secretary were also in the forefront of the fight with the SAS. They have experience of what such fighting entails. Even at that time they have seen many Aurovilians leave Auroville. They have seen children of Auroville being traumatised. They have seen Aurovilians being barred from entering one place or another on account of their allegiances to a particular group. The symptoms of similar actions are showing up again in Auroville. It is important and vital for us to stop this course of action. I appeal to our politicians to review the course of confrontation taken by them and change.
Violence in its many forms
Dear friends
I consider myself as pacifist, and are trying to avoid any violence in thoughts and actions.
I have been working in many high tension areas and war zones, and I think I know violence in all its many forms, from the silent, to the verbal to the physical. Everybody tend to focus only on the last, but all forms are violence, and the physical only comes after the first ones. Some people feel fine being very verbally violent as long as they refrain for letting it become physical – but it is the same.
One small early life experience made a huge impact on me. As a young student, I was very outspoken and had a good sharp tongue, and often made fun of people and situations. One evening after having made fun of many people, I was passed up by a big strong guy. He gripped my collar, and said that if I continued making fun of him, he would beat me up. He said I was good with words, and he was not, but I used the words as weapons. HIs only weapon was his physical strength, and he would use it if I continued. His logic hit me very deep, and still do. There is no real difference between verbal violence and physical violence.
I love Auroville and Auroville is my home. But I never seen Auroville as a very peaceful place, despite our spiritual aspirations. Many other cultures and communities I have experienced, are far more peaceful! The way we interact and communicate is pretty harsh. I normally stay out of Auronet as I find it a very violent space.
I really hope we can step back from entering into physical violence here in Auroville, but would like to remind people that we should also try to lower our non-physical violence. The way we communicate, the way we block each other, the way we refer to each other. To me it is often very violent and uncomfortable. I hope that we can learn from this conflict, and reflect on our way of collaborating and communicating