Be careful what you wish for. Because it may come true.
First we had the Aurovillagers begging Indira Gandhi to grab Auroville from the clutches of the Sri Aurobindo Society (see episode 6), and lo and behold: they got their wish granted! Obviously, having Auroville transferred to the Central Government came with its risks, and it was always clear that the Auroville Foundation Act was not what the Aurovillagers thought or wished it was, but meant that the Central Government, through the Governing Board, was the governor of Auroville. That the Aurovillagers' “self-governance” was nothing but a temporary gift conditioned on the willingness of the Central Government seems to have escaped most of them, and they lived like drunkards with no tomorrow, swinging from the chandelier. So, clearly, their granted wish to punish the evil SAS came with the built-in caveat that if one day, the Central Government would not be so happy anymore with all that chandelier-swinging, the Aurovillagers would have no choice but to get sober. The outcome of the combination of the Auroville Foundation Act cum 3 decades of arrogant drunken swinging is what we witness today.
Not very good in learning lessons, here we are again: the Aurovillagers, this time very displeased with the Central Government objecting to their drunken chandelier-swinging, had filed a court case in December, this time to force the Government to stop telling them they can't swing drunken from the chandelier anymore. And again: lo and behold: their wish was granted and they received a “favourable” verdict! In the sense that the judge, within the limits of acceptable reasoning and rationality, gave them as much as he possibly could.
I'm obviously referring to the case at the National Green Tribunal, filed by Navroz and Sandeep, against the Auroville Foundation, which strangely enough includes themselves as they are (still) Aurovilians.
The case claimed that Auroville is a valuable “deemed” forest for India and it is not allowed to touch it because it would demolish a sort of “green heritage site” of India. They argued five million other strange things as well, most of which are as anti-Auroville as can possibly be, at least against the Auroville that the Mother described and wanted. Obviously, their claims make total sense from the standpoint of drunken, chandelier-swinging Aurovillagers.
So the judge, surprisingly, tried to grant them as much of their wish as he possibly could without joining them on the chandelier.
Meaning that the “felling of trees” is still forbidden, until a certain committee is formed to look at the Master Plan again with this time total focus on the sanctity of trees and the holiness of the pit that was dug in Darkali and is suddenly considered a “precious water body”, and their proposals get an Environmental Clearance. (I already explained in episode 19A that the direct goal of these court-cases (many still to come) are not necessarily to win, but to buy time, always more and more time in which they can remain swinging drunkenly. And sit on “their” large “properties”.)
Apart from Greta-induced panic about imminent asphyxiation, the argument that defends this need for a sudden worship of the trees planted to obstruct the Galaxy plan from ever being realised seems to stem from these most peculiar passages:
« But at the same time, one will have to visualize the vision of the MOTHER when they planted the trees of such a nature which are intended for the purpose of attracting large scale biological resources and also for the purpose of protecting soil erosion etc.»
« Further, the MOTHER never intended to destroy the green cover for the purpose of making the construction as well, as far as possible, as MOTHER was aware of impact of planting of trees on Earth and how it is playing a role in protecting environment. »
« […] so that the number of trees to be cut can be minimized so that the
vision of the MOTHER of creating a green cover in that area can be protected.»
I am very curious to know which passages of Mother's words were kept so hidden that I never came across them and which contain these kinds of directions. When the Mother was planning and starting Auroville, there was no green cover to be found, according to the accepted history of Auroville, so how can She have spoken about destroying it?
But also in this case, the judge could unfortunately not grant the Aurovillagers their full wish, as in their drunkenness, they made statements that were totally insane, as most drunken people do.
The completely absurd claim that the wild growth here is a “deemed forest” (and thus protected by Indian law), was untenable, even for the most willing of judges. There is no way for anybody in this world to officially proclaim that this wooded area, mainly filled with foreign species and thorny creepers that both grow like wildfire in this tropical climate (and thereby are a straight-forward THREAT to growing a real forest of indigenous species), is a “forest” of any kind or valuable to India. It would come down to saying that black is white.
This obviously does not stop the Aurovillagers from making sure the lie is still repeated in the media: Divya Chandrababu, writing in the Hindustani Times about the demolition and the NGT verdict shows how she is not interested in doing real journalism (and thus reading the NGT verdict she is “reporting” on) or actual facts, but only in whipping up emotional support for the Aurovillagers, when she writes “The Crown Road project is 4.4 km long for which trees under the definition of “Deemed Forest” and Auroville’s Youth Centre which is near the iconic Matrimandir have to go.”
It's not clear either how she got the idea that a “deemed forest” is defined as “a tree of a specific species”.
Another rather unpleasant surprise for the Aurovillagers is that the verdict explicitly mentions that “unauthorised occupation” can be taken care of. So we started to take care of that. We brought down the old house in Centre Field, where Mita and Tapas had been living. It was built exactly on the Crown Road. The Crown Road is 0.63% of the Auroville City Area. How difficult can it be NOT to build on it?
The house was very spacious, specifically given the setting of Auroville, where the Mother had explicitly given constraints for the flats the Aurovilians were expected to live in. After all, Auroville was a spiritual project where material comfort and luxury have no place: feeling comfortable is supposed to come from being in contact with the Divine, not from having material possessions.
On July 31st, during the Crown Walk and Talk (a day-long event, organised by the Secretary very soon after her arrival), it was clearly stated to Mita and Tapas that well, since their house is fully in the middle of the Crown Road, and since their temporary permission to live there had expired long ago, they were in total violation of the Master Plan and would have to be relocated.
In the days after this event, meaning at the start of August, the discussion about how to go about the relocation begun.
By early October, Mita and Tapas signed the stewardship agreement for Nolly's house. Nolly had died about a year earlier, and her house was wanted by many in Auroville, as it had been built only a few years ago and is very large. They moved in a month or two later. The old house was left untouched for all that time. But when the demolition started, suddenly it all needed to be done “in a different way” – where have we heard this before? Suddenly they needed to have been warned long in advance, so that they could have taken out the window frames and demolished it by themselves – again, totally the same false claims as with the Youth Centre. In December, when an agreement was made that the “youth” would demolish the structures by themselves, they changed their minds the next day, tore up the agreement and did not do anything, but waited for the JCB to come so they could milk the media cow. When a few days later an agreement was made about the clearing of Darkali, the same thing happened: the next day, a stay order came “out of the blue (wink wink)”, forbidding all clearing. The agreement turned out to be a ruse. They tried the same trick here again. No lessons learned, ever.
Only, this time it didn't work anymore. Once bitten, twice shy. Auroville has the rule that nobody can have the “stewardship” (read “possession”) of two houses. I'm sure there are exceptions made for very obedient cult members, but well, who cares. Oh wait, Mita is also the steward of her mom's house. Again: who cares. I personally don't, because it is obvious that 'stewardships' are not meant to exist at all in Auroville. There should be no claim whatsoever to possession here, and 'stewardship' is nothing but a euphemism for de facto ownership. But it's obviously not a de iure ownership. They have not managed yet to remove the fact that the Auroville Foundation owns all assets. Just watch the court case arrive in which they will make the claim that “de facto” after 54 years in fact should be accepted as “de iure”. I'm not kidding. The universe needs to adjust itself to their delusions.
We're witnessing here a real-life staging of the famous tale of the fisherman and his wife, in which the fisherman caught a wish-fulfilling fish who needed to make every wish of his wife come true. Being rich wasn't enough, she needed to be aristocracy. Then she needed to be Queen, and then Empress, and then Pope, and finally she needed to be God, because really, nothing was ever satisfying the hunger of her ego. Obviously, that last wish was not fulfilled, and the sheer hubris caused her to lose everything she had wished for and be a fisherman's wife again, for the rest of her life.
Watch the downfall of the bloated egos of the Aurovillagers, as they will go to court to claim possession of everything here, and the invalidity of the Auroville Foundation Act.
Back to the very exciting story of Mita and Tapas' house and how it got demolished.
In fact, it appears that Tapas had sort of “inherited” that house. That's of course once again a complete travesty of everything Auroville is meant to be: housing assets are supposed to be occupied according to need, not according to nepotism or cronyism. “Inheriting” an asset of the Auroville Foundation is a contradiction in terms.
The argument that “we have lived here for 25 years” (or whatever other amount the Aurovillagers deem a very convincing number) is obviously very emotional and understandable, but here also (how many times does it need explaining?): this is Auroville. We're here to not possess things, to live a spiritual life for the benefit of all. The accumulation of possessions is the total opposite of what Auroville was created for by the Mother. How can clinging to an old house be anywhere near acceptable behaviour, let alone loudly defended, in this place, Auroville, “the ideal place for those who want to know the joy and liberation of no longer having any personal possessions” (The Mother,18 September 1969)
Where in any leaflet or propaganda video have you ever seen the Aurovillagers explain that in Auroville, clinging to “your” “property” is the most spiritual thing in the world, that needs to be publicly lauded as “the real Auroville”? Where is their pre-2021 publication that Auroville is all about possessions and power? If this reaction to the demolition of an old empty house is not proving their complete hypocrisy, what is?
In spite of all of that, the demolition took place under immense emotional outcry of the Aurovillagers. Once again slandering the Secretary, once again claiming to be the poor victims of evil power-grabbers, once again lying so bluntly it makes your stomach turn. When I wrote a comment to give some totally omitted facts, I was blocked from accessing their page within a few minutes. I guess because their lies can't stand “open discussion” and “honest debate”, and certainly not facts.
They will go down screaming and cursing. Dignity is not something this cult is based on. But that's rather to be expected: how can anybody who hijacks a project intended for a higher consciousness, a project that is meant to be a gift to humanity, a project aimed at finding the path to a new and selfless society, how can anybody who grabs such a project and turns it into its opposite, laughing at the powerless goodwill of its founder, proudly stealing it and filling it with ego and corruption, how can such a person ever have any dignity?
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