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There is, deep within oneself, ‘something’ that is most reticent to enter
controversies, to ‘take sides’, to narrow itself to either this or that. It is this
‘something’ that begins to breathe and sing in Sri Aurobindo’s wideness and vast
unifying perception of the complexity of the manifestation, that begins to
experience the certainty of delight when the Mother forcefully indicates that it is
exclusivism that brings humanity’s defeat, that there must instead be this AND that
AND that again.
So, this is indeed the challenge before us: to work for the gradual advent of an all
integrating living Truth within which all truths will find their harmonious purpose.
However, this is not what is trying to happen today, and this is why each one must
be aware and consciously affirm the necessary choice.
The victory of consciousness is not that one ‘side’ wins over the other, but that all
‘sides’ discover the living reality that can alone reconcile them.
But the current and most unfortunate trend is defined in that the present Chairman
of the AV Foundation Governing Board as well as of its International Advisory
Council, has not only repeatedly made his own choice known in unconditional
favour of the architect (who has himself been the only permanent member of the
Governing Board under three successive Chairmen), he has also caused the present
Governing Board to intervene directly, putting all the weight of the Central
Government’s powers at the service of this choice.
It is thus that, by means of political and legal powers, the Central Government
appointed Secretary has been instructed to take over the finances of the
Matrimandir on behalf of the architect whose authority is now held supreme.
That this authority could not be freely recognised by all concerned over a period of
more than thirty years, that the architect’s actual capacity to lead and harmonise
was not by its own merits made evident, is disregarded entirely.
Instead, the blame for this disharmony is squarely attributed on those who have
been tenacious enough to resist this arbitrariness where it hurts the most, at the
centre. The ‘culprits’ are designated: these are the criminals, named and labelled.
The present Chairman happens to have also been the author and the prime mover
of the very Act of Parliament that has given birth to the Auroville Foundation, and
has earlier in his present tenure been most expansive in assuring every Aurovilian
that the constitution of the AV Foundation has only one purpose, to aid and serve
the free growth of Auroville according to its Charter, and would not ever be used to
coerce, nor to impose any specific direction other than those implied by the
Charter.
Yet by now he has himself turned this instrument of protection and safeguard into
one of refined coercion.
Perhaps he believes that he can lead Auroville on its correct course?
Be that as it may, the fact is that today Auroville has taken a step backwards.
Clashes there were, but these, all of these, were in effect honest clashes, clashes of