I don't know who reads this. But I know for a fact that people who only read the Stand for Auroville Unity and Auroville News social media, websites and bulletins will never be able to understand anything of what is happening here.
The Aurovillagers claim to be for unity and harmony and truth, but they immediately block every person that says something or posts information that is not part of their propaganda campaign and remove the comments that denounce the propaganda for its falsehood.
It took them exactly five minutes to ban me from their instagram page, a tiny bit longer to ban me from their facebook page, and they do this with every person that does not simply parrot their narrative but tries to give some perspective to the incongruent snippets of emo-bait they push out endlessly. It is quite strange that the people who follow them would not take notice of this fact: there is never anybody allowed to say something else than their narrative, their pages are all cleared of dissenting voices, they are echo-chambers.
If they were really interested in providing people with the truth, they would not be desperately cutting off all information and persons that can give more information than they themselves provide.
And what they provide makes no sense in the end. Everybody can check that for themselves. They claim all kinds of things, but by their own admission, reality always turns out to fully contradict these claims. That makes no sense whatsoever, and leaves people who really want to understand and who are sympathetic hanging in mid-air. They are left with the choice to either cultishly stop questioning and simply embrace the emotional “we are the good poor victims, no matter what happens”, or to stay fully confused and never receive real answers to their questions.
Looking at their recent posts, it is clear that their following is dwindling severely, but also that whoever is still around expresses this sense of total confusion. The question “why??” keeps being repeated, and also the question why no action is taken by the Aurovillagers. The latter cannot give any real answer to such questions, because to answer this meaningfully, they have to admit to lying and misinforming, to not being who they claim they are. They would have to admit that they are not here for ecology but for personal comfort and profit, and that they have zero legal standing. They would have to say the truth about how all this came about, that it is in fact the central government that is endorsing and executing this work, and that the government is the legal owner of Auroville because they themselves begged the government to take over back in 1975.
All their big words and claims would turn out to be false, and they would have to admit that they have none of the rights or positions they so proudly profess they have. They have nothing to show for, and will never admit to the fact that all of what is happening is nothing else than the normal, logical, inevitable result of their own actions over the decades, of all their scheming and profiteering and the hijacking of the Mother's project of Auroville.
If they would let people know the truth and have them make up their own minds, there would hardly be anybody who would support them, so they have to wildly and endlessly censor all the people who want to share real information to help outside people make sense of it all.
Well, it won't last indefinitely. Recently, two big events have happened, two major defeats for the Aurovillagers. Anybody who wants to understand what exactly happened, will have to find their information in other places than the cult corners, because once again, they're just making it an emotional nonsense parade that has people feel a lot, but understand nothing.
The two things that happened are that:
The Supreme Court gave an Interim Order on December 13th in which the NGT verdict was stayed, allowing Auroville to continue development like before, with no restrictions whatsoever.
The Governing Board “gazetted” a new set of Regulations on January 4th, in which the procedure for admission into and termination from the Register of Residents is described, overruling the formerly gazetted Regulations.
Let me start with the second event.
In the last episode, the issue of “entry in the Register of Residents” was discussed at length. This issue is important, because it deals with who is officially an Aurovilian and who is not.
For decades, the Entry Service decided what the procedure was that people had to go through to become Aurovilians, and they decided who would be accepted and who wouldn’t. There were some “support letters” involved, in which long-term Aurovilians needed to endorse that you become an Aurovilian.
In 2016, after years of trying to have an overhaul of this clearly extremely subjective and personal procedure, and in an attempt to make it much more open and easy to join Auroville, a new policy was finally voted and agreed upon.
Until then, applicants were treated like suspects instead of being welcomed, and refusal of some people had turned into fights over why a small group of 8 people would have the power to decide on such a crucial matter.
The door had always been more closed than open, the Entry Service had been on strike very often for very long periods of time, and Auroville's population growth had been restricted to a mere trickle instead of the influx one would expect such a rosy cosy wonderful harmonious peace-and-love place to have. The amount of people leaving Auroville within the first five years of their joining was also huge, and it isn't hard to figure out why so many people would not stay after having the real-life experience for some time.
2016 was the year in which this huge change in the Entry Policy was finally finalised and voted into being: from now on, the Entry Service would only be a secretariat doing the administration, and the decision of who would join would be left to a pool of mentors, with each Newcomer assigned two mentors, and free to choose a third one. The mentors would then recommend that the person be accepted as a Newcomer or an Aurovilian when they assessed the time was ripe, and that would be it. If ever there would be huge opposition to the mentors’ decision, a larger meeting to discuss this and take a decision with all interested persons would be held.
It sounded like real progress. But then again, this was Aurovillage and the cult leaders would not let change pass just like that.
First of all, the Entry Service did not accept the new policy, and refused to implement it. After three months of silently going on with the old policy, someone blew the whistle on this, but not publicly. The Auroville Council at that time took the decision to keep it all quiet and simply change the Entry Service team, putting in place new members who were selected during some selection process, quite similar to what the Aurovillagers still use today.
The new team started implementing the new policy to the letter, and within three months, they accepted as many Newcomers as was normally accepted in a whole year. Obviously, this wasn't to the liking of several of the influential cult members, and the whole new and voted policy, brought into being by “the established community processes”, was put into the waste bin after only three months. The whole Entry process was once more frozen for almost two years, during which the new policy was thoroughly “adjusted” (in violation of all “established community processes”), so that in practice, the old system of a few selected trusted cult members being the judge and jury of who would be allowed to join the happy few was simply reinstated. They created the Entry Board, which was a complete copy/paste of the former Entry Service, and started all over again, now with the added fun of the “mentors”, who were now only a sort of smoke-screen covering the fact that the Entry Board took the final decision anyway. The mentors themselves were of course also scrutinised and selected so that they would act according to the unwritten but restrictive policy of the Aurovillagers: protect the kingdoms, let in only what is unavoidable or what is financially useful. Aurovilians who were not to the liking of the Aurovillage gatekeepers would simply be refused to be “chosen mentors”, even though the policy of course never mentioned such an overruling power: newcomers were on paper free to choose whomever they wanted. But in reality, as always, Aurovillage was quite different.
In the meantime, some of the cult leaders understood that this whole mess needed some legal backing and officialising. According to the Auroville Foundation Act, the entry and exit issue was supposed to go according to some Regulations created by the Governing Board, and almost 30 years after the creation of the Act, these Regulations were still nonexistent. The gap would be filled by a text written by the cult's unofficial “legal expert”, which became the Regulations 2020, and which, completely in violation of the Act itself, gave all the decision power to the Residents' Assembly instead of the Governing Board. That was very weird, because it was the Governing Board that created these Regulations, as the Residents' Assembly has no legal power whatsoever to do so. You can read all about it in the last episode.
That episode ended with the following prediction:
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.
And that's exactly what now has happened. New Regulations have been formulated and “gazetted”, meaning they have been published in the legal Gazette of India, which contains all new legislation. This means that the new Regulations 2023 are now the legal ones, and supersede the former Regulations 2020, which have suddenly gone down the waste bin of history.
What is quite funny is that just recently, in December, the Aurovillagers finally created the “Termination Committee” that they had invented in the Regulations 2020. They were all set to go exercise their legal rights to kick people out of Auroville, and now suddenly their whole Termination Committee does not have any legal validity anymore, poor chaps. They had held a whole charade of “RAD” nonsense once again to officially enthrone their Terminators, who were raring to go, and even before they could have their first meeting or termination session, they were already out of a job.
With the tables suddenly turned on them, it will be really interesting to see what they will do with their new Terminators. Are they going to remain “appointed” and virtually terminate the people they don’t want in Aurovillage? With no legal standing, they can not have any influence at all on the real life situation, so what will they do with this group that hasn’t been able to do even one thing yet? But as with all their virtual reality cosplayers, they want to keep the delusion alive that one day, Superhero Judge will somehow turn reality inside out and have the delusion proclaimed to be reality, so they want to be ready for that moment and have all of their stooges in the driver’s seat.
It is mentally disturbed to hold such beliefs, so it sounds seriously insane (because that’s what it is), but it is actually the only way to explain their behaviour of keeping a virtual administration of Auroville running. They have zero influence on ground realities, and still they keep all these groups “in place” and pretend they are some “authority”. It’s grown-ups stuck in make-believe, which is a scary thing to witness.
There's no way they can legally challenge the new Regulations, but that won’t stop them from filing a case and throw more handfuls of money down the bottomless pit of fees for their useless lawyers who enchant them with promises that one day, if they keep trying endlessly, their delusions will become reality.
The Aurovillagers have taken a long time to publicly announce this extremely predictable move by the Governing Board, and they clearly know that these new Regulations announce the end of their rule over Auroville.
They did immediately sent out a short email internally, not published on public forums:
RA WCom: Attack on Admission and Termination processes for Auroville
Dear community,
We are sharing with you a new set of Admission and Termination Regulations for Auroville, which were published by the Secretary in the Gazette of India on the 4th of January, 2024. (Go to page 10 for the English section.)
In effect, this puts all the power of Admission and Termination in the hands of the GB and the Secretary, with a few token residents who have to be proposed to and approved by the GB.
We have been advised by our lawyers that at first reading this seems to be in direct contradiction to provisions in the Auroville Foundation Act that are related to this responsibility.
We are exploring immediate steps that can be taken and will keep you informed.
In community,
The Working Committee of the RAAravinda, Bharathy, Chali, Hemant, Sauro, Valli
The final downfall has now started, and the shock is showing.
First of all: calling a gazetted text an “attack” is absurd. Nothing is getting attacked, except their delusional interpretation of reality: their bubble is being burst by every piece of reality that they are confronted with. There is no fight here, and nobody “attacks” anything: the Governing Board has simply replaced an old version of the Regulations with a new one.
Secondly, everybody who cares to read the Auroville Foundation Act for themselves can see with their own eyes that the Governing Board has the power to create these Regulations, without any restrictions, and is certainly not bound to consult or include the Residents' Assembly in its formulation of whatever Rules or Regulations it wants to make.
The Residents' Assembly is simply nowhere mentioned outside the sections that deal with it directly and describe the roles of each of the three parts of the Auroville Foundation. The Governing Board is dealt with in a vastly larger part of the Act, and the Central Government clearly is the most significant party of the whole Auroville Foundation Act, as it is mentioned literally everywhere.
For easy access, here are the relevant passages that pertain to the entry/exit registration, which are never quoted like this by the Aurovillagers, as they immediately expose the false claims of the cult for being fabrications (bold added by me for emphasis):
19. Functions of Residents’ Assembly.—
(1) The Resident's 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 foregoing 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;
[…]
32. Power to make regulations.—
(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:—
(a) the procedure to be followed at meetings of the Governing Board or at the meetings of the committees appointed by it and the number of members which shall form a quorum at such meetings;
(b) the delegation to the Chairman, other members, Secretary or other officers of the Governing Board, of any of the powers, duties of the Governing Board under this Act;
(c) the travelling and other allowances payable to persons associated under sub-section (4) of section 11 or co-opted under sub-section (2) of section 16;
(d) the pay and allowances and leave and other conditions of service of officers (other than those appointed by the Central Government) and other employees of the Foundation;
(e) the maintenance of the accounts of the Foundation;
(f) the maintenance of the registers and other records of the Foundation and its various committees;
(g) the appointment by the Governing Board of agents to discharge on its behalf any of its functions;
(h) admission or termination of persons in the register of residents.
(3) No regulation made by the Governing Board shall have effect until it has been approved by the Central Government and published in the Official Gazette, and the Central Government, in approving the regulation, may make changes therein which appear to it to be necessary.
Note that Section 32 does not mention the Residents' Assembly at all, not even once.
A quick manual count of the whole text of the Auroville Foundation Act, discarding the Table of Contents, the preamble (which does not mention the Residents' Assembly at all) and Chapter one which is a list of definitions, shows that the following words appear
“Central Government” (including its mentions as “that Government”): 72 times
“Governing Board”: 56 times
“Residents' Assembly”: 15 times
It is delusional to think that any Court of Justice will ever agree with the Aurovillagers that the Residents' Assembly is in fact the real party in this whole affair, and that the Act actually wants to convey something different from what is written. The absurdity of this should be clear to all, but still, it is actually what the Aurovillagers have been trying and failing to achieve for 2 years already.
Everybody who reads the act can see that it is a lie to claim that there is any contradiction between these Regulations and the Act. On the contrary, the Regulations are directly based on the pertinent sections of the Act, and clearly mention those as the legal basis for their existence.
It is bewildering to see that the fact that the Governing Board takes back its powers is now suddenly painted by these people as something criminal. The former Regulations had – in complete contradiction to the Auroville Foundation Act – given those powers away without even giving the slightest hint of an explanation why suddenly the Residents' Assembly was supposed to be the governing body of Auroville.
The mention of the “a few token residents” in this email is especially hypocritical, as that is in fact exactly what they themselves had done in their Regulations 2020: only the Appellate Committee had two members of the Governing Board (a minority), and both other Committees had only residents. The whole affair of the Governing Board's Regulations 2020 had nothing at all to do with the Governing Board, apart from these “few token members”. Now that the tables have been turned on them, suddenly they cry “foul” and are deeply shocked by the “injustice” of getting a taste of their own medicine.
Another quick manual count reveals that in the now obsolete RA version of the Regulations (2020), the following terms appear (again excluding the preamble and the definitions)
Residents' Assembly: 12 times
Governing Board: 3 times
That's clearly NOT in line with the Auroville Foundation Act, and all arguments to the contrary are based on wishful thinking and a corrupted presentation of the text of the Auroville Foundation Act. Once again: please read the documents for yourself and draw your own conclusions. That's the one thing these people never recommend you to do: do your own research. They need you to just blindly believe what they tell you, no matter how incongruous and irrational.
After a week or more, the Stand for Auroville Unity social media pages published the following statement:
⚠️On January 4th, 2024, new regulations by the Auroville Foundation quietly entered into law, which further removed residential control of the community by seizing control of Entry & Exit processes. According to these new regulations, the power to decide who is a resident of Auroville and who isn't would now lie in the Foundation’s hands. These regulations, however, have been passed on dubious grounds, as they are totally inconsistent with the Auroville Foundation Act -an act of parliament that holds far more power and legitimacy.
🔸We wait to see if and how this will be put into effect. Irrespectively, the situation remains alarming: Aurovilians, once empowered, now live in fear of visa cancellation and police action. 🤯
Defend Auroville's essence! 💔
It's clearly a watered-down version of their internal email, but the emotional string-pulling is vastly making up for that. Why would Aurovilians who want to live according to the Mother’s guidelines suddenly live in fear of visa cancellation and police action? Or are they afraid because they were arrogantly defying and insulting the Indian government in India, and are now no longer empowered to get away with such colonial attitudes and might have to face the consequences of their actions?
The words “Aurovilians, once empowered” in effect gives away what their real concern here is: the power over Auroville. Everything else is just smoke and mirrors for the gallery. The loss of the power they were illegally given is what drives this whole campaign, and the only thing they are fighting for.
Another misleading statement in the above message, is their claim that the Auroville Foundation Act “holds far more power and legitimacy” than – than what exactly?
Apparently they mean to say “than the Regulations 2023”. Which is absurd, as the Regulations 2023 are now part and parcel of the Auroville Foundation Act: these are Regulations mentioned in the Act and created under the Act, and therefore now simply new additions to the Act. If anybody had made the claim that the Regulations 2020 were totally overruled by the Auroville Foundation Act (which would be possible to argue as they clearly contained text that was inconsistent with the Act), the Aurovillagers would have claimed exactly this: that the Regulations 2020 were an inseparable portion of the Auroville Foundation Act. And they were. Until January 4th 2024.
And once again, they claim to be “Auroville's essence”. The same old claim that they and they alone “are Auroville”, and that without them, Auroville does not exist anymore. It's a full exposure of their humongous ego and lack of spiritual understanding: the only thing that matters is they themselves, their powers and their actions, no matter who or what they are. Auroville as a project of the Mother, outside of their little personalities, clearly does not exist in their world.
It should be clear to everybody with the least bit of discernment left, that the whole argumentation of the Aurovillagers is based on identity, and not on action: it's only about who does something, and never about what is being done. When they clear an enormous field of trees, only to create a frisbee playground, it's totally environmentally justified and for the benefit of humanity and not at all destruction or an ecological disaster. But when others cut a tree, they claim that the earth will suffer an irreparable blow. When they are in power in Auroville, suddenly everything here is harmonious, peaceful, united, loving, caring, blissful and whatever. But the moment someone else has power over Auroville, everything here turns into a violent mess overnight, division is everywhere, darkness has replaced the light, and the people who do things are described as dark authoritarian dictators, they are power-greedy, red-eyed, violent, power-hungry monsters who do only evil things, and all happiness, harmony, unity and beauty have suddenly turned into their opposites.
Isn't the cartoonish idiocy of their portrayal of reality screaming out to all of us?
Two days ago, they announced that they now decided to hold an “Emergency Residents' Assembly Decision” to condemn the new Regulations 2023 as “inconsistent with the Auroville Foundation Act” (again, bold is my emphasis):
Dear Residents,
This Emergency Residents' Assembly Decision-making process is initiated by the Working Committee of the Residents' Assembly.
INTRO
We bring to your attention the gravest of developments, a real threat to Auroville’s existence as an international experimental township. As sincere Aurovilians, we must continue to use our voice as members of the Residents’ Assembly, one of the 3 statutory authorities of the Auroville Foundation, to speak our truth and stand for our beliefs and Auroville’s values.Please participate, whatever your opinion or choice. Anonymity is guaranteed. That means your name and vote will be kept a secret.
RESOLUTION
We, the Working Committee of the Residents Assembly, (Aravinda, Bharathy, Chali, Hemant, Sauro, Valli) call for the following Resolution of the Residents’ Assembly to be ratified via an Emergency RAD:
The Residents' Assembly resolves that the new ‘Auroville Foundation (Admission and Termination of persons in the Register of Residents) Regulations, 2023’ published in the Gazette of India on the 4th of January, 2024, by the Secretary of the Governing Board, is an overreach by the Governing Board and usurps the powers given to the Residents’ Assembly as per the Foundation Act.
Further, we state that the Residents’ Assembly, as one of the three statutory authorities of the Auroville Foundation, asserts its right to carry out its functions as detailed in the Auroville Foundation Act, with the purpose “to further development of Auroville in accordance with its original Charter” (first paragraph of the Auroville Foundation Act, 1988).
PARTICIPATE ONLINE
Use your personalized voting link sent by the Residents' Assembly Service (RAS). If you didn't receive the link, please check spam or promotions folders. If still not there, kindly visit RAS polling stations.
OR IN PERSON
If you prefer to register your decision in person, please visit the RAS polling stations:
TUESDAY (Jan. 16th) @ Solar Kitchen: 11 am - 1 pm
THURSDAY (Jan. 18th) @ Solar Kitchen: 11 am - 1 pm
SATURDAY (Jan. 20th) @ PTPS Aspiration: 11 am - 1 pm
SATURDAY (Jan. 20th) @ Solar Kitchen: 3 pm - 5 pm
SUNDAY (Jan. 21st) @ Solar Kitchen: 11 am - 1 pm
The Emergency RAD will run until SUNDAY, 21st of January 2024
SUMMARY OF THE ISSUE
The Governing Board has recently promulgated a new set of “Auroville Foundation Regulations 2023”, which has been published in the Gazette of India by the Secretary. These regulations intend to replace the existing entry and exit processes decided by the community and to create a committee constituted by the Governing Board for this purpose called the ‘Admission and Termination Scrutinizing Committee’.
It is apparent that these new regulations are inconsistent with the Auroville Foundation Act, 1988, and the Auroville Foundation Rules, 1997, on multiple counts.
The Governing Board is creating a committee appointed by itself which has all the power to admit or terminate Aurovilians, Newcomers and even Volunteers. Any appeals to the decision of this committee are reviewed by an Appellate Committee consisting only of Governing Board members, and finally the Secretary can veto any of the decisions of the above committees. This gives absolutely no weight or respect to the residents of Auroville to take part in these decisions, vis à vis entry and exit to Auroville and in direct contradiction to provisions in the Auroville Foundation Act related to this function given to the Residents’ Assembly. We remind all of Mother’s words: "Only those who have resolved to stay in Auroville for good have the right to intervene in its organization” (The Mother 22.1.1971).
Unlike the previous Admission and Termination Regulations, 2020, these new regulations were created and approved by the Governing Board without consultation with the Residents’ Assembly. And these regulations strip away the rightful role of the Residents’ Assembly to be actively involved in the development, governance and growth of Auroville, disregarding the very raison d'être of Auroville as a self regulated experiment in Human Unity based on the teachings of Mother and Sri Aurobindo.
REFERENCE DOCUMENTS:
The Auroville Foundation Act, 1988
The Auroville Foundation Rules, 1997
Auroville Foundation (Admission and Termination of persons in the Register of Residents) Regulations, 2020
Auroville Foundation (Admission and Termination of persons in the Register of Residents) Regulations, 2023
RAD policy, 2023
The idea to have an “Emergency Residents' Assembly Decision” about this before going to court is striking. “Residents' Assembly Decisions” are legally non-existent. They have exactly zero legal value, they are not mentioned in the Auroville Foundation Act or any of its derivative Rules, Regulations, Standing Orders or Office Orders. Legally, they mean nothing.
From the text of the Auroville Foundation Act cited above, it should be obvious to everybody that there is also no legal case to be made against the Governing Board making new Regulations: there is no mention anywhere that the Governing Board has to ask for approval from the Residents' Assembly. There is no mention of any restriction. The Governing Board is free to create Committees, Rules and Regulations as it sees fit, without conditions. The Residents' Assembly is not mentioned anywhere outside of the sections of the Act that deal with the Residents' Assembly or its interaction with the Governing Board.
With the Stay Order on the NGT verdict, they now have spent 2 years paying loads of money to lawyers for all kinds of court cases that has brought them exactly zero benefit.
They have lost all the cases except two (one was won but about an obsolete Office Order), and the two verdicts they claim as a victory were in fact compromises. But more importantly: both these “victory” verdicts are “stayed”, meaning they are not valid at present and await the decision on their appeal. So the sum total so far is exactly nothing. All that time, energy and money is pure waste, it got them nothing but false hope.
However, not doing anything at all is the acceptance of total defeat for the Aurovillage cult leaders. They know that there is a serious risk for them to be stripped of their “Aurovilian” status due to the fact that anybody is allowed to complain to the Governing Board's Admission and Termination Scrutinising Committee about anybody on the RoR. Why would people who have spent the past two years slandering the Secretary and the Governing Board, going to court against the so needed changes, fighting for their illegal power, sending an endless stream of messages into the world that are filled with lies and painting a completely false picture of the situation in Auroville, why should these people be Aurovilians? Have they shown any adherence to the Mother's requirements for Aurovilians and living in Auroville, or have they publicly and proudly shown the opposite?
The present situation is torture for these self-tormenting souls, and they have to do something to give some solace. And if worst comes to worst, then they want to drag their cult members down with them. If they lose everything, they want to have at least the consolation of seeing as large a group as possible losing everything as well.
My guess of what they are trying to do here, is that they want to have the backing of a large following to pressure the court into accepting a case that cannot be legally argued or defended, having no other argument than “but it's how we have been doing since 30 years!” It's desperate beyond desperation, but that is where they are. They have nothing left.
The fact that for 30 years, the Auroville Foundation Act was not implemented as it should have been, and that the Governing Board, under the direct guidance of its Chairman, gave all its powers away to a handful of people who claimed to be the Residents' Assembly, is not an argument to change the Act and rewrite it according to the Aurovillagers' wishes. On the contrary, the fact that it was not implemented but corrupted, and the mess that has resulted from these 30 years of aberration, are exactly the best reason to immediately course-correct and start doing what the Act asks for.
The “summary of the issue” in this email is an especially odious and noxious text, as anyone who has read the excerpts of the Auroville Foundation Act cited above can now see for themselves. Literally all of the claims here are lies, falsehoods and misrepresentations. There is a good reason why they do not quote the relevant portions of the Act in full, ever.
Especially these lines are nasty:
It is apparent that these new regulations are inconsistent with the Auroville Foundation Act, 1988, and the Auroville Foundation Rules, 1997, on multiple counts.
That claim is just dropped here, with no explanation, no citation, no proof, no argumentation. It’s only, purely, opinion, to be believed at face value.
Note that once again, they do not give the relevant text of the Act, they only claim that the new procedure contradicts them. No proof whatsoever, why would that be?
They are so desperately clutching at straws, that they now cite the Mother's words that only those who have dedicated their lives to Auroville have the right to decide anything about Auroville.
Where on earth was their respect for the Mother's wishes and these words when they rushed to Delhi in the mid-1970s to beg Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to deliver them from the then horrible authoritarian legal owners of Auroville, the Sri Aurobindo Society?
How extremely hypocritical is it, that now, after 35 years, they are fighting against the very action and text they created as their saving grace back then? All the boasting, the arrogant parading, the loud victorious declarations of how these Western hippies had “won” Auroville for themselves by playing the Indian Government and having the Auroville Foundation Act passed through Parliament, what is left of that now? Who are they blaming today for the curse they called upon themselves back then? How immature is all of this?
Now remember that this was the second defeat the Aurovillagers had to swallow over the past month. (And by the time I’m publishing this post, another Regulation has been gazetted by the Governing Board, creating a Selection Process Committee to create a process to select members to the Working Committee. That makes it a hat-trick this month!)
They first had been given a very unpleasant surprise when the new double-judge bench of the Supreme Court (the highest court of India, and against whose verdict no appeal is possible) had studied the April 2022 NGT verdict afresh and decided that its ruling was prima facie out of bounds, and that they saw grounds to warrant a Stay Order on the verdict until they give a final decision.
What this means, is that suddenly, from one day to the next, all restrictions on development in Auroville, which were imposed by the NGT since December 10, 2021, are gone. There is no restriction anymore on cutting trees or clearing road right-of-ways. We can again move forward with all city construction without any condition, in total freedom.
It's miraculous. After two years of not being able to move forward with the city development, suddenly the red light has turned into green. The work on the Crown Road has shifted into 5th gear, and the work on the Radials has started with full dedication.
Clearing through Aurodam and Centre Field has been done, which was the last real stretch that still had to be cleared up to create the full circle. We can now finally start to see the full Crown circle come into material existence, as can be seen from the picture below. It’s taken through an airplane window, which gives never a clear sight, but it’s clear enough to give a good idea of what’s happening, including the lake development. Keep in mind also that all the dark green areas are trees that are NOT cut. Notice how most of the City Area is overgrown with trees. And notice on the left side the large barren frisbee field. After the lake, it’s the largest barren area on Auroville land. And nobody so much as peeped about all the trees being cut there, because they were cut by the people who now claim to be religious ecologists getting heart attacks at the sight of a chainsaw and shrieking “No!! The residents say NO to this development!” when someone else touches a tree in or around Auroville.
The existing “service trees” (peltophorum pterocarpum, a tree known as “copperpod”, “yellow flamboyant” or “yellow poinciana”, given the spiritual meaning of “service” by the Mother) along the Crown stretch from Solar Kitchen to the Gaya crossing have also been cut, and a big stink was made out of that.
The Aurovillagers put out distress calls on their social media for the clearing through Aurodam/Center Field and through Revelation (which now suddenly and instantaneously has been upgraded from a “forest” to a “sanctuary” in their descriptions), but were wise enough not to repeat their stupid blocking actions of 2 years ago. However, the cutting of the trees along the Crown was somehow too much for them, and they showed up again (in much much smaller numbers than before) to see if they could block the work somehow.
They couldn't, and they made their chances of staying in Auroville slimmer of course, by being a nuisance and questioning Indian officials on duty, claiming to have some mythical “right” to know and be consulted, while totally unwilling to actually participate in the work.
They created several social media posts about the cutting, and claim that these trees were planted with funds from the EU, while at the same time claiming that they were seeds from the tree that stands in the Ashram court yard and shades Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's tomb, called the Samadhi. This begs the question: if the trees had been grown from freely obtained seeds, what exactly did the EU pay for?
They also claim that Roger Anger (the architect who worked for 3 years with the Mother on the Galaxy city plan) had planned the place of these trees, and that therefore, they are totally in the right place and should remain where they were planted. Obviously, what they do not ever mention, is that Roger had been blocked in his work by these same anti-Galaxy “environmentalist” cult members since 1978 until his death in 2008. Initially he simply went back to France, as he saw no way to build Auroville with such a resistance from the people on the ground: they didn't want the Mother's city and had shut down his office, so what was there for him to do? He returned 6-7 years later, requested by some tenacious city-fans, but everything that he was able to do until his death was an immense compromise. There was no part of the Galaxy that was not attacked, the whole city area was filled with trees and “forests” over time, trees and structures were put purposefully wherever the main city elements were planned, there was too much power in the hands of people who were ferociously against the Galaxy for any element of the City to be developed. So he concentrated on the Matrimandir, and everything else was just whatever he could possibly implement in the setting of full opposition. Therefore, every decision taken by Roger after 1978, was a compromise, not his wish. After his death, in many meetings, drunk on their illegal power and blind to the inevitable future, they ridiculed the Galaxy plan openly, certain that after all these years of successful blocking, it had been delegated to the waste-bin of history and would never ever see its material implementation. That is the setting in which I joined Auroville, just after Roger’s death. It cannot have been much different during his last years.
It is obvious, by looking at the situation in the Ashram courtyard, that a “service tree” grows into a humongous canopy. Having loads of such trees along a road with the central infrastructure of water pipes, drainage, electricity and internet cables, is a recipe for disaster: the roots of all these trees will damage the underground infrastructure, and the canopies themselves will make building the Crown Belt almost impossible. When Roger agreed to have these trees, he obviously had given up on ever seeing the Crown Belt built, and I am convinced that he died in the conviction that the Galaxy would never be built as he designed it, certainly not in full. The last thing he must have held for possible, after thirty years of arrogant Aurovillage appropriation of Auroville, was that the Government of India would, after only 15 years, come to the rescue, and start building the Mother's Galaxy as he designed it. In full.
Roger, this one’s for you!
