A few days ago I stumbled upon this quote, which I found very applicable to the situation in Auroville:
It is quite puzzling why I seem to be “the enemy”. And I am not in the “[9/11] truth movement”, I'm not competing with anybody. I'm just looking for the truth. And the truth doesn't have “sides”. It isn't divisive. If everyone is aiming for the truth, everyone should be on the same page, we should all go in the same direction. So it should be actually unifying instead of divisive. Dr. Judy Wood
That is quite simple, and rather undeniable, I would say. If we all really want the truth, then we all should move in the same direction and be united in our search for the truth.
So why is Auroville then so divided? Why are people constantly claiming that reconciliation is needed, that unification is needed? If we were sincere in our efforts to find the truth, would we not automatically, by default, be together and one?
Again, it seems quite hard to deny this, no? So the only possible conclusion is that if we are not on the same page, then we are not all trying to find the truth.
Because facts are facts and evidence is evidence, and if we are sincere, we will be trying to find the reality that includes all the facts, and welcome everybody who contributes with facts, as we want to get as many facts on the table as we possibly can.
Two new facts that we have learned about recently, are two new court cases launched by the same Aurovillagers who already had filed writ petitions last year. I don't know really what they are about, but it is clear that they are once again a variation on the main theme: they want to have their misinterpretation of the Auroville Foundation Act legalised by having some judge agree with them, as seems to have been the case with the August 12th, 2022 judgement, which is now not only under appeal but also stayed (meaning it is suspended, not legally valid until further notice).
By now, their legal campaign is sinking into the mud as much as their propaganda campaign. Interest in their endlessly repetitive “we are poor victims, look at these horrible criminals!” posts is waning, as they only just make claims and allegations without any proof or background. Empty sloganesque sound-bites that are in the end meaningless for anyone who wants to really understand something of this notorious Auroville.
Their campaign websites are having very few updates lately, and I guess even less success, as only a group of cult-members and trolls in foreign countries are still trying to beat the drum. They seemed to have something going almost a year and a half ago, but it's clear that it's dying out under the weight of their empty, repetitive and unsubstantiated protest yells. They've lost this, and it's becoming clear to more and more people.
Their court cases are equally repetitive and boring: they can only do the same: endlessly repeat, without any real proof, their false claim that “the “RA” is the boss of Auroville according to the Auroville Foundation Act”. To their utter horror, the reality that this is a complete corruption of the actual text – a corruption that they were smilingly allowed to get away with for almost 35 years – is now rather bluntly pushed into their face. Not because any Indian officer wants to do that, no, only because THEY themselves keep filing writ petitions, on which, in the end, only one single answer can come: “sorry but you are wrong”. According to the Auroville Foundation Act, the Governing Board has the legal power to govern Auroville, and the residents can give feedback but not “rule” over Auroville. They keep refusing to hear the message, and therefore there is no other option for the Courts but to say it louder and clearer every time: “No, you are wrong. Get it, alright.”
I can only repeat: please read the Act for yourself. It will be impossible not to see how the Governing Board was created to govern and manage the Auroville Foundation, and how the Residents' Assembly was given a place as the group of people who are bringing this project to life, who are giving it a material, physical expression. The residents are obviously given a voice, to make suggestions to the Governing Board, give feedback and inform them of how life-on-the-ground is. But it is obvious that this has nothing to do with taking decisions over what Auroville is or is not, or with anything that regards the overall management of Auroville as Mother's project – let alone its finances or legalities.
We can discuss this until the cows come home, but the Aurovillage claim will never be rationally defendable: the whole logic and construction of the Auroville Foundation Act makes no sense whatsoever if the Governing Board is nothing but a servitor of the supreme-ruling Residents' Assembly, which has no defined means to actually manage the Auroville Foundation. The whole text of the Auroville Foundation Act explains that the Governing Board is in charge of the Auroville project, and that the Residents' Assembly and the International Advisory Council are soundboards that give suggestions and ideas to the Governing Board. The claims made by the Aurovillagers that the Act means something totally different is based on a few small quotations, lifted out of their context, and interpreted in a convoluted and corrupted way, so that they seem to say something else than what they actually do. They can find one judge maybe who is willing for whatever reason to go along with them, but they won't find a second one – and it could be questioned why someone would be partial to such a very weird interpretation of the Act.
They are now getting negative feedback everywhere, their campaigns are completely collapsing. It is the curse of the fact that they are forced into action: they have to DO something, they have to ACT: if they do nothing, the present reality will endure. The present reality is that they have lost the kingdom they lived and worked for. The whole kingdom was possible only because they could act behind the scenes, hidden safely behind a firewall of propaganda which they fully controlled, and which nobody could breach. That situation does not exist anymore. They are now forced to act out in the open, and they will have to show their real intentions by doing so. It's “damned if you do, damned if you don't”: if they do nothing, they have lost everything, but if they do anything, they reveal more than they can afford.
Their actions show that in reality, they are not looking for the truth, they are not on the same page, they are not wanting to collaborate, to work together towards the building of the Galaxy Master Plan. They are not here for the Mother's Auroville, they are not here to live according to the Charter and everything that the Mother gave as directions for Auroville and Aurovilians. They show very clearly that they want power, and that they will fight for that power till the end. Not really a very “Aurovilian” attitude to put on display, to say the least.
Don't take my word for it: just look at what is happening. Time forces them to reveal their real motives, and the longer you keep watching, the more you will see the mask disappear and the real face come through.
They talk about “unity”, about “building bridges”, about “solving the division”, about “reconciliation”, about “participatory processes”, about “coming together” and “building Auroville together”. But they go to court, accusing their fellow-Aurovilians, the Secretary and the Governing Board of being a threat to Auroville and to “the RA”. They claim that they are deeply suffering because of the simple administrative clean-up that is happening. They claim that we, who they call “the Secretary's sycophants” or the “Secretary's illegally appointed collaborators”, are ruining Auroville and causing them a lot of pain and distress. They talk about “uniting”, but they threaten all Aurovilians that if they do not side with the Aurovillagers, they will be kicked out of Auroville as soon as Dr. Jayanti Ravi is no longer the Secretary of the Auroville Foundation.It may sound childish and silly, but after decades of actually having lived under these bullies' tyranny, the people take such threats very seriously, and many will collaborate with the Aurovillagers, as they have seen over the decades how the Aurovillagers always got away with their crimes and were above the law.
From the way I am treated, there is no doubt in my mind that they would kick all of us out of Auroville in one big day of “great purge”, given half the chance. (Let's see if they ever get it.) How believable is their effort for “unity” and “harmony” then? Are they really trying to find ways out of a divided situation, if they tell people that unless they support the Aurovillage leaders, they will be kicked out of Auroville in a short while? Is that “living according to the Auroville Charter”? Are they really wanting to honour the Auroville Foundation Act, created on THEIR request, if they are lying in court about what is said in the Auroville Foundation Act and what has happened here over the past decades?
They talk about “coming together”, but I am greeted with utter disgust by many, when I cross them in public places. It's so idiotic that I cannot help but laugh when it happens, but still: how different from what is being pretended.
A new wave of restructuring of Auroville's functioning has started a few weeks back. It goes without saying that they immediately got into a higher gear again, and called for a total refusal of cooperation and a boycott of the new teams and the process. So much for collaboration and unity and harmony and coming together and finding ways to reconcile etc.
The team that I was appointed to, the Visitors' Centre executives, are fortunately having a quite good and cooperative transition – with the exception of some rebels, and the fact that I am personally disliked and was requested by the old team that I would voluntarily withdraw from the new team, but well, one can't have it all, can one?
In spite of this, the Aurovillagers wanted to create a big stink, and specifically instil fear and anger in the paid workers, by claiming that their jobs will be gone soon, and that they better stick with and stand up for the people who have abused them and used them as cheap servants for decades. Because “better the devil you know” or something, their reasoning is never logical, as we see all the time. “The misery of today is a certainty, the misery of tomorrow is a question mark, so please don't dream that this transition might actually improve things”: in Aurovillage, change is always a bad thing, and things only always get worse! Where on earth is any spirituality or any of the Mother's or Sri Aurobindo's teachings in what these people do and proclaim, I wonder.
They had called for an Auroville-wide strike of workers and workplaces, to give a clear signal: WE are Auroville, and if WE don't want something to happen here, it won't! At the end of the day of strike, there would be a protest march, in Aurovillage-speak: a “silent unity walk”. Hah, they were going to show the Governing Board, the Secretary and us vile collaborators with the Dark Side that Auroville was not going to take this authoritarian take-over lying down! Enough is enough, the “RA” would show its teeth once again!
Loads of posters were stuck all over the villages in and around Auroville, warning them in Tamil that the root of Auroville (they translated it with “the spirit” of Auroville, one of these terms they have completely hijacked and can only be understood, defined or expressed by them and nobody else) is under attack, and that not only the Aurovillagers were going to suffer the consequences, but the local workers also! They claimed that people were being dismissed and threatened, but it was as believable as if the French aristocracy in the late 1780s had tried to convince French peasants that they were all going to be fed into the guillotine.
The result can be seen in the video below. The strike did not happen at all, and the “protest march” was truly pitiable.
I know they would have a huge celebration if they managed to kick me out of here, but I tell you, this was such a complete flop that it's really hard not to feel sorry for people who make such a sad spectacle of themselves. The once so arrogant and proud elite of Aurovillage, ruling supreme over their colonial kingdom, now reduced to a little bunch of angry people protesting the loss of their thrones. Remember how they constantly claim to “be the Auroville residents”, to “be the Foundation”, to “be Auroville”? The endlessly repeated phrases of how they are so crucial here, so indispensable for Auroville's existence? Look at this spectacle: just a few dozen of disgruntled, ordinary people.
They will try to hide it, but they are seething with anger over their loss of power. It will become clearer for everyone with every action they take. Just like Kali shows in the video below, the fury inside of them will burst through the cracks from time to time. Every time they do something, someone will slip up, drop the mask, and reveal the reality of who they are.
They have suddenly lost their 50-year long carte blanche to do whatever they please here, even criminal acts. They got away with murder, and managed always to have any person who was critical of their dictatorship – be it a simple Aurovilian or a Secretary or a Governing Board member – removed, bullied out of here, in short: neutralised, conquered. The same seemed to be happening with Dr. Jayanti Ravi: on December 10th, 2021, the Aurovillagers got a stay order on the tree cutting that was needed for the construction of the Crown Road. The NGT verdict of April 28th, 2022, seemed to be on their side and agree with a lot of their talking points. The judgement of August 12th, 2022, on three of the writ petitions filed in the Madras High Court seemed also to agree, somewhat weirdly, with their completely wrong interpretation of the Auroville Foundation Act. And in September 2022, they managed to call off a highly prestigious diplomatic event at UNESCO in Paris. All of this clearly reinforces their entitlement, their arrogance, their belief that they are the “chosen ones”, a special kind of people who have the Divine sanction to rule supreme over Auroville. But in reality they have no longer a say in anything that is actually happening in Auroville. The dichotomy between what was and what is must create some serious cognitive dissonance in their heads. There will be more violent outbursts if this goes on for much longer. After all, they are not special or spiritual. Ordinary people do ordinary things. But that's not what Auroville is meant for.