1322 / 1424
1322
transfer Matrimandir’s financial control to managers seated in the town hall were an
inevitable outcome of this line of development.
This is nothing less than an attempt to reassign the sovereign energy and authority
of Auroville’s spiritual centre into the hands of economic and civic authorities. It is
an attempt to downgrade a vibrant, living and free spiritual presence into a mere
tool in the hands of habitual power brokers. It is the Western cycle of social
organisation asserting itself – reaching out to snatch control of something that must
at all cost remain self-determining for the sheer spiritual well-being of this city.
Again this denouement has been a long time in the developing.
One has only to study the town hall (even its architecture), consider what it
represents and who will inhabit it. Town halls are generally occupied by ‘mushroom
groups’ – that is, groups which are not rooted in life and action but are rather those
that supposedly ‘manage’ the work and the life of others. Thus they do not often
experience the regulating and self-limiting effects of handling a ‘piece of matter’.
But Mother conceived of Auroville as a city with no managers – She said
‘No army,
no police’
, and She never spoke of a judiciary, nor of legislature. On the contrary,
She said ‘
More committees, more useless talk
!’. When asked about organisation,
Her answer was that it was a ‘
discipline in action’
and in Auroville we ‘
aspired to go
beyond arbitrary’
and ordinary methods and means of organisation. Clearly
whatever else She meant, She NEVER recommended that Auroville settle for
ordinary structures of self-organisation.
But more and more one observes in Auroville a parody and imitation of outside
methods to organise governance in Auroville – of course without the solid checks
and balances and/or means and recourses to justice that exist outside! Auroville
does not have the ethical, social, moral, religious codes that are tools to regulate
the darker side of human beings in ordinary societies. And now one hears bruited
the argument justifying these methods – that human nature is ordinary! But
indeed, Mother knew that already. She was wiser than the very human Aurovilians!
She set targets that were achievable for ordinary humans. She never had illusions
about Aurovilians being a super humanity – ‘sub humanity’ is an adjective She
Herself once used to describe residents! So why are so many people so keen to
adopt these ordinary ways? Again analysable reasons can be found.
4. Who will inhabit the town hall?
If you look at all the groups and persons who will have ‘desks’ at the town hall and
you also observe the manner in which they function, you can immediately see that
together they constitute Auroville’s Establishment. These are the ‘civil servants’
who have controlled, oriented and directed development in Auroville for many
years. The structure has worked so smoothly, has kept so many people happy, that
it is only when you have occasion to run afoul of it that you notice its aberrations.
And often only a certain type of person has cause to ‘run afoul’. Therefore it is
again only such a person who is likely to recognise how this ‘entity’ within the
collectivity has helped prevent any real change in the three essential psychological
domains of Auroville’s development – namely its governance, its economics and its
education. For years now there has flourished a marvellously symbiotic relationship
between many groups and persons. Even when there have been disagreements
these have never threatened the fundamental ideological orientation and basic axis
of control in Auroville. And because these persons have had this pragmatic unity of