Damned if you do, damned if you don't. That's still the main update on Aurovillage's situation. Not doing anything means all is lost, but with every action they reveal their true intentions. The propaganda mask, cultivated over decades and so successful in the past, drops ever more, revealing a very nasty face.
Here's the latest “unfortunate slip-up” of the cornered cult. Remember all these wonderful things you heard about Auroville? How everybody here lives in peace and harmony, how this is a place like no other, with no politics and where everybody works together for the collective benefit, totally selflessly?
Yea, that was never true. That was only a nice story for fundraising pamphlets.
In reality, it's a cult that craves full control of what happens here so the cult leadership can keep living up its colonial power-trip.
I guess you never imagined that one of the most celebrated “arch-cult-pioneers” would write the following email, showing clearly what kind of emotional blackmail they use to make sure they stay in charge here. Keep in mind that this person is here from the very beginning, has been a loud leading voice since forever, one of the main actors in the battle against the Sri Aurobindo Society, running up and down to Delhi to get his and his friends' interests on the table of the highest political figures. A highly respected person, arguably on of the main faces of Aurovillage over the past 5 decades.
From: Frederick Schulze Buxloh <frederickcert@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Oct 23, 2023, 5:18 PM
Subject: [certitude] Fwd: 🔴 EMERGENCY RA DECISION-MAKING ON UNAUTHORIZED REMOVAL OF RESIDENTS FROM ROR
To: certitudecommunity@auroville.org.in <certitudecommunity@auroville.org.in>
Hi, Certitudians, I have accepted to mobilise members of our community to put their vote... So help me God.
M I knocking from door to door and gently make you vote? This is a uncontroversial topic, admission and omission in the Register of Residents.
We should let this privilege, given by the AVFoundation Act and re- confirmed by court, not slip away.
Pl confirm that you vote and I will tick you off my list.
Thank you
Fraternally
Frederick
Where to start with such an utterly deranged message? Every line is bewildering.
“Big Brother” Frederick is now on a religious quest to make people vote. He invokes God for support in this noble task. He will do this in old-style Inquisition/Gestapo manner: a knock on the door, and then he'll “gently” force you to vote. There will be no discussion about this: Frederick has decided that this issue is “uncontroversial”, and therefore, you will have no arguments against his “gentle” forcing, and you will have no right to refuse. You will not be allowed to jeopardise Frederick's delusional perception that the decision who is or is not an Aurovilian is his and his clique's god-given right, supposedly confirmed by apparently equally delusional judges.
So when Frederick knocks on your door, you will open the door and confirm that you will vote. Then Frederick will tick you off his list.
It's not clear what happens to people who are not ticked off his list, but it is obvious from this email that it won't be anything good. The Inquisition and Gestapo are not known for their benevolence.
The emergency vote is of course organised by the Aurovillagers, who are desperately needing to show that they are still somehow winning here, in order to make sure the money from the Western sponsors keeps flowing in (sounds an awful lot like Zelensky). By now, it's become clear to all but the wilfully blind that the Aurovillage cult has completely lost its grip on what happens in Auroville. No matter how many “RA groups” they create, no matter how many emails and bulletins and messages they write, no matter how many threats with legal action they send around, the reality is simple: their legal battle has almost come to its disastrous end, their propaganda campaign now reaches only their own cult members from abroad (the old brainwashed followers they always had), and the cult members here in Auroville get depressed and disheartened because they see that no matter how many meetings they hold or how many super-duper RADs they vote in, nothing changes the reality that they have exactly zero influence on what happens in Auroville.
But in order to pay for their expensive battles and the survival of their kingdoms, money needs to be begged for, and in order to make people feel they are donating to some meaningful result, they need to show that they are not just standing here aimlessly, left behind while the Auroville train has left the station.
But: every action reveals their true face.
So: damned if you do, damned if you don't.
As always, the actions they take are surrounded by smoke screens of blabber, mostly simple false claims and misrepresentations, as this blog has documented on many occasions.
Frederick's email was accompanied by the following forwarded email, which funnily enough starts with the warning “ATTENTION! DO NO FORWARD THIS EMAIL.”
From: Residents' Assembly Service <raservice@auroville.services>
Date: Mon, 23 Oct, 2023, 3:00 pm
Subject: 🔴 EMERGENCY RA DECISION-MAKING ON UNAUTHORIZED REMOVAL OF RESIDENTS FROM ROR
To: <frederickcert@gmail.com>
EMERGENCY RAD
ATTENTION !
DO NOT FORWARD THIS EMAIL.
The voting links below are personalized and unique. It means ONLY YOU should use them.
EMERGENCY RESIDENTS' ASSEMBLY DECISION-MAKING PROCESS
Dear Frederick,
This Emergency Residents' Assembly Decision-making process is initiated by the Working Committee of the Residents' Assembly to approve or disapprove the following resolution:
Preamble
There have been two separate communications on Auronet and through Massbulletin from the Office of the Secretary of the Auroville Foundation, announcing that Mael Shanti Vidal and Satprem Maini have been removed from the RoR. The announcements are dated April 13th (about Mael) and September 29th (about Satprem), 2023, and signed by Mr. Sathyanarayan, Accounts Officer/Under Secretary In Charge, in the office of the Secretary to the Governing Board. In addition, the GB FAMC has resolved jointly with the illegal Working Committee (Anu, Arun, Joseba, Partha, Selvaraj, Srimoyi, Tine) to remove T. Ayyappan as executive of the Auroville Earth Institute because his name is not in the RoR.
As per Section 19.2 (a) of the Auroville Foundation Act, 1988, and the Auroville Foundation (Admission and Termination) Regulations, 2020, as published in the Gazette of India in 2020, adding and removing any individual in the Register of Residents is the sole prerogative of the Residents' Assembly either directly or through committees appointed and empowered by the RA for this purpose.
This has been confirmed by the Hon'ble Madras High Court in its recent court order dated 4th of September. It is to be noted that no process under the Act or the Admission and Termination Regulations has been initiated or approved to enable the Secretary to the Governing Board to remove any names from the Register of Residents.
Resolution
We declare the announcements and acts as mentioned above as invalid and against the approved regulations and principles.
We hereby resolve that Ayyappan, Mael, Satprem and any other residents whose names have been removed or omitted without due process, remain bonafide members of the Residents' Assembly (see translation at the bottom of the email).
VOTE ONLINE
Please click on the button below to proceed with the online form to register your decision:
Note how they always use the term “bona fide”, in a desperate attempt to counter the fact that they have zero legal standing in all they do. Their court cases are failing on all sides, but they try to patch up their lack of legal standing with the term “bona fide”, to make us believe that somehow, even if the legalities show that they make false claims, somehow there's something there that still magically grants them some legal right to something. It's like how they use the term “ the spirit of” when they make claims that go 100% against the literal words of something. A desperate attempt to manipulate the uninformed and unsuspecting well-wishers.
Now notice what this whole new RAD rambling is all about. It's about the removal of Maël and Serge Maïni (“Satprem”) from the Register of Residents. Both of them are expelled from India, and thus no longer able to live in and be part of Auroville.
These are simple facts: anybody can see that for themselves. When your visa gets cancelled and the Government of India orders you to leave the country, there's not going to be an Aurovillage “RA Decision Making Process” that will overturn this decision of the Government of India and suddenly give this people a visa to enter India again. You never know, but I hope nobody is that delusional that they believe the Aurovillagers are going to create an “RA FRRO” which will issue valid Indian visas for whomever they like.
So obviously, Maël and Serge can no longer be on the list of residents of Auroville: they are not allowed to reside in the country where Auroville is located anymore. But even if they would remain in the Register of Residents (which would be absurd), then still nothing would change in reality: they still would not be able to come and live here: the decision to expel them from India was not taken by anybody in Auroville, nobody here, not even the Governing Board, has that power or jurisdiction.
So, all this fuss is again about nothing at all. The Aurovillagers make noise for the sake of pretending they have some say in something here, in spite of the blatant reality.
To make more smoke, they have seized on the fact that Ayyappan had not filled out the required information to be included in the Register of Residents, and hence is no longer legally an Aurovilian and can therefore not be the executive of an Auroville unit.
Since May, 2022, 1.5 years ago, the Foundation has been updating the Register of Residents, which had not been done since 2005. The Aurovillagers have of course their “RA RoR”, meaning they keep their own list, called the “Master List”, which has no legal value at all, but is an almost sacred document in Aurovillage.
To make sure that the Governing Board got a complete and updated Register of Residents, the Secretary has over the past 18 months made numerous announcements and sent out call after call after call to make sure all Aurovilians would fill out the needed questionnaire to make sure that the Register could be updated and all deceased persons or those who left Auroville removed, and that those people who are actually here and part of Auroville are included.
For some reason, Ayyappan seems to not have heard or seen anything (which is a near absurd claim for an executive of an Auroville unit, and a co-executive with Serge Maïni, who is a rabid Aurovillager and has been fighting every move of the Foundation Office), and thus had not participated in the update. Recently, there was another last call sent out, with an explicit list of people who were “missing” from the RoR, to give those a last chance to get included.
The issue is sorted by now, apparently Ayyappan updated his data. But it's clear that he has a connection with the Aurovillagers as he allows them to use his name to propagandise their “action”.
Notice also that there is once more a claim made here that the Modified Interim Order of September 4th confirms the Aurovillagers' false claim that “adding and removing any individual in the Register of Residents is the sole prerogative of the Residents' Assembly either directly or through committees appointed and empowered by the RA for this purpose”.
As was shown in the last episode, which dealt exactly with this Modified Interim Order, anyone who cares to read the Modified Interim Order for themselves can see that this is an outright lie. The order does not say anything at all about the Register of Residents, and only simply acknowledges that the Residents' Assembly is a body of the Auroville Foundation and that the suspension of the August 12th, 2022 verdict does not touch its functioning according to the Auroville Foundation Act.
The main claim here, namely that “adding and removing any individual in the Register of Residents is the sole prerogative of the Residents' Assembly either directly or through committees appointed and empowered by the RA for this purpose”, is a typical manipulative Aurovillage trap, based on some seemingly correct statements, but if one really looks into it, a complete travesty and misrepresentation of the real situation.
Once more: please read the Auroville Foundation Act for yourself with an open, common sense mind, categorise the sections according to their basic meaning and the subject each clause deals with. (Chapter 1 deals with definitions; Chapter 2 deals with the actual transfer of the legal ownership of Auroville from the Sri Aurobindo Society to the Government of India, which happened in 1988 and is not of any importance for the legal battle today; Chapter 3 is where the good stuff starts.)
Read it with an attitude of simple logic and normal rationality: what is the general goal that the Act wants to convey, what is the reality it wants to establish. Creating a chaotic, incoherent reality can never be the goal of any law, unless obviously there is corrupt and ill intent, which we should not assume here. At least not if we can make sense of the text without having to conclude that a nefarious outcome was the starting point.
If we read the Act as a coherent whole, it outlines, even if only quite broadly, a functioning of the Auroville Foundation where the Governing Board is in charge of the management, and actually bears the responsibility for the whole project, for all of its material and legal matters. The Governing Board is tasked to provide the material setting in which the Aurovilians will bring the Charter to life. The Residents' Assembly is the collective of all legally registered Aurovilians, and this collective can meet with the Governing Board through a delegation, called the Working Committee, which is supposed to be the go-between conveying messages from the Aurovilians to the Governing Board, and from the Governing Board to the Aurovilians. The Aurovilians can thus give suggestions, feedback and ideas to the Governing Board about improvements or changes or new developments.
Read the Act and see for yourself that there is no provision whatsoever for the Residents' Assembly to take any decision about Auroville's management or set-up. Nothing like that is mentioned. The Residents' Assembly does not have any “power”. It is therefore obvious that it is not intended to make any decision of any significance at all: it is supposed to communicate suggestions, ideas and feedback to the Governing Board, which is the body that takes all decisions, taking into account the feedback received.
It is also clear that in such a setting, where all are focused on creating the Mother's Auroville and living according to Auroville's Charter – which undoubtedly and blatantly evidently means a spiritual life, dedicated to the service of the Divine –, the Act assumes that all will be going quite harmoniously. There is in the Act no hint of a possible clash between the Governing Board and the Aurovilians, let alone a grotesque power struggle in which a small group of residents claim to be the Residents' Assembly and claim that they need to have all the decision power for themselves alone, and in effect, be the dictators and rule supreme over Auroville.
However, due to the fact that the past Governing Boards did almost nothing of what they were supposed to be doing according to the Auroville Foundation Act, and in actual fact gave away their responsibility for the management to this clique of self-proclaimed “RA”-masters, this absurd situation has become the idiotic reality of today.
Back to the matter at hand: the legalities of who decides who is an Aurovilian and who isn't.
This is in principle a simple point: anybody who is on the Register of Residents is legally an Aurovilian. Everybody who is not on the Register of Residents cannot claim to be an Aurovilian.
The Auroville Foundation Act creates the Register of Residents in section 18 point 1, when it defines what the Residents' Assembly is (“shall consist of all the residents of Auroville who are for the time being entered in the register of residents maintained under this section”).
Since it mentions this Register of Residents here for the first time, the next point (18.2) immediately defines it in the following way:
The Secretary to the Governing Board shall maintain the register of residents in such manner as may be prescribed and all the persons who are residents of Auroville and who are of the age of eighteen years and above are entitled to have their name entered in the register on an application made to the Secretary in such form as may be prescribed.
This is crucial. Read it again. It is a point under Section 18, which deals with the Register of Residents, and this point does not mention anything about any power, let alone the “sole prerogative” of the Residents' Assembly to decide who is in the Register of Residents or not. This point, which defines the Register of Residents, does not even mention the Residents' Assembly. It gives all responsibility for the Register of Residents directly to the Secretary.
Point 3 of this Section 18 deals with the one-time regularisation of the situation as it existed in 1988, to grant that all existing residents at that time were directly entered into the Register of Resident.
And that's it for Section 18, which creates and defines the Register of Residents.
So what do these people base their claim that it is the “sole prerogative of the RA” on?
On a complete misinterpretation of a further clause, and a gazetted regulation which arguably is very questionable.
In Section 19, the Act deals with the Residents' Assembly. The clause in question comes very quickly, and therefore I'll quote the text up until the crucial words in full:
19. (1) The Residents' Assembly shall perform such functions as are required by this Act and shall advise the Governing Board in respect of all activities relating to the residents of Auroville;
(2) In particular, and without prejudice to the forgoing powers, the Residents' Assembly may –
(a) allow the admission or cause the termination of persons in the register of residents in accordance with the regulations made under section 32
This is the crux of the matter. This line is abused by the Aurovillagers to mean “the sole prerogative”, which for anyone with the least bit of comprehensive reading skills, is a grossly inflated misrepresentation of the actual meaning.
First of all, notice that the Residents' Assembly does not receive any powers (unlike the Governing Board), and that its main task is to “advise the Governing Board” about the matters pertaining to living in Auroville. “Advise”. Not “take decisions”.
Secondly, pay great attention to the introductory line of the given list of things the Residents' Assembly MAY do:
In particular, and without prejudice to the foregoing powers,
There are no foregoing powers given to the Residents' Assembly; everything described before pertains to the Governing Board. This means that what follows is not meant to in any way diminish what was already given as powers to the Governing Board and its Secretary.
It means that what follows cannot take away from what was already described before: the Register of Residents is the responsibility of the Secretary to the Governing Board.
So what is the Residents' Assembly supposed to do with the Register of Residents?
Allow admission or cause termination of persons in the register of residents in accordance with the regulations made under section 32
Without knowing what is written in Section 32, we can't really know what is actually being said here. So here's Section 32:
32. (1) The Governing Board may make regulations, not inconsistent with this Act and the rules made thereunder, for enabling it to discharge its functions under this Act.
(2) Without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing power, such regulations may provide for all or any of the following matters, namely –
[…]
(h) admission or termination of persons in the register of residents
(Subpoints (a) to (g) deal with internal Governing Board matters and are irrelevant to our topic.)
Isn't this interesting? This whole Section 32 deals exclusively with a power given to the Governing Board, and does not mention the Residents' Assembly anywhere.
I've stressed this point in earlier episodes, but it really is essential to notice that the Auroville Foundation Act hardly deals with the Residents' Assembly, but mainly describes the functioning of the Governing Board – making it abundantly clear that it is the Governing Board that takes all decisions and deals with all legal matters of responsibility and the management of Auroville: that is why it gets so much attention and is described in detail compared to the Residents' Assembly.
Claiming that the Residents' Assembly is in charge of Auroville according to the Act, or even claiming that it has the same powers and functions on the same level as the Governing Board, is a total perversion of the text of the Act. It is therefore indispensable for anyone who wants to really understand what the reality of Auroville today is, to read the Auroville Foundation Act for themselves.
Now, in 2020, there were finally, after more than 30 years, some regulations gazetted (legalised), which dealt only with this subpoint (h): the admission or termination of persons in the register of residents. You can find these regulations here. (Note that the text is first given in Hindi, and from page 7 in English.)
The text is quite stunning, to say the least. The Governing Board, which has effectively the “sole prerogative” and power given by the Act to make regulations, is mentioned only as the body which makes the Regulations 2020. And then there is only... the Residents' Assembly. Everything suddenly turns around the Residents' Assembly, as if this body has all the power to decide everything. The Governing Board is mentioned only once again, in Section 14, when it can bring two members to the Appellate Committee, to join three members of the Resident's Assembly.
Let this sink in: in these Regulations, officially created by the Governing Board, the Governing Board itself
abdicates all of its decision power – without any ado or even mention of this utterly strange fact – to the Residents' Assembly, which is nowhere defined as a decision-making body and has nowhere been given any description of how it is supposed to take decisions, which is seriously problematic given that the Residents' Assembly is supposed to have 50,000 members
is mentioned in only 1 out of 14 clauses
receives the “right” to be part of an Appellate Committee where it is outnumbered 3 to 2 by the Residents' Assembly
It should strike everybody that something here is very weird. This text from 2020 does not seem to be a logical extension of the Auroville Foundation Act of 1988. Obviously, 30 years have passed, but that does not matter in law: as long as the law has not officially been changed, it may be 200 years old, it is still the law. It seems quite clear that these Regulations 2020 in fact do not respect the letter, the spirit nor the meaning of the Auroville Foundation Act, and therefore cannot be said to be consistent with the Act.
And that's a problem, because Section 32 of the Act clearly says that the Regulations have to be
not inconsistent with this Act and the rules made thereunder
That's a very, very crucial point. Here it all comes back to the eternal claim of the Aurovillagers, that the Act actually does not say what it says, but that in fact, it intended all along that the Residents' Assembly would be the central decision making body, that would govern Auroville instead of the so clearly named Governing Board.
Actually, reading these Regulations, and noticing how stunningly different they are from the Auroville Foundation Act, the case is made, through this striking contradiction between the texts, that that claim is totally false. If the Act really would have given all the power to the Residents' Assembly, it would mention the Residents' Assembly everywhere and not the Governing Board, just like the Regulations 2020 do.
But because there is such a difference, one can clearly argue that these Regulation are inconsistent with the Act itself, and therefore cannot be legally maintained.
Now the fun part is that the Governing Board or the Auroville Foundation does not have to go to court to point this out or have this officially and legally confirmed.
It can simply overrule these Regulations with new ones. Because that's the power you have when you are in charge of something: you can decide the rules.
And the Act gives the power to decide the rules unequivocally to the Governing Board. And not to any RA cult gang. No matter how loudly and indignantly they scream.
