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over the Matrimandir, the soul of Auroville. This definitely rules out all dialogue and
rather creates an environment of intolerance and fanaticism. Whereas, regarding
the Matrimandir, the Mother repeatedly stressed the need to rise to a level of
harmony where the most opposite tendencies meet.
‘… Now for me, things are no longer exclusive, not at all. I very clearly see the
possibility of using the most opposite tendencies AT THE SAME TIME… with some
slight deftness, that’s all. It’s not exclusive. I don’t say ‘Ah, no, not his!’ No, no, no:
everything, all of it together. That’s what I want, to succeed in creating a place
where all contraries can be united. That… Unless we can do that…
(gesture in circle)
it just goes on and on, we go on and on…’
(Mother’s Agenda, 31
st
December 1969).
The legitimacy of the claim made by the Auroville Council that it represents the
wishes of the entire community, through a game of votes and numbers, is
questionable. In reality, most of the community refuses to participate in such a
false process of voting and numbers.
Rather that resorting to such falsehood, the Auroville Council should instead
genuinely attempt to make the entire community aware of the issue at hand – the
disagreement over the vision of how Matrimandir must be built.
We aspire to realise the Mother’s vision of the Matrimandir as the soul of Auroville
with its sanctuary and soul-space of Gardens, Lake and Park. Roger’s design which
seeks instead to reduce the Matrimandir into a mere monumental City Centre is in
direct contradiction to the Mother’s recorded statements.
We choose to stand by the firm decision to address the issue at hand through
dialogue and refuse to give way to the strong-armed tactics of the Auroville
Council. We hope that the entire community will join us in this endeavour to realise
the Matrimandir and its Peace Area (Gardens, Lake and Park).
As Mother as so emphatically stated:
‘You must all agree. That is THE ONLY way to do good work’
(2
nd
April 1970 –
Mother on Auroville).
The Matrimandir Workers Team,
20 September 2003”
Note: In the meantime, a growing number of people had questioned the project of
building a huge lake in the centre of Auroville, such as Roger A and Harald Kraft
had promoted. Several Aurovilians had got their expertises together and drafted a
very comprehensive study and assessment of the entire project as presented by
Harald Kraft and questioned every part of it, and its implications in sociological,
ecological, ethical, financial terms as well as in terms of the spirit of Auroville. Even
financially, the project had been deemed by the Governing Board itself as
unacceptable and rather insane.
On September 20
th
2003, this team of Aurovilians, some of whom had been
engaged for many years into water conservation works in the entire bio-region and
obtained very tangible results and gained much understanding, published a
voluminous study, including 11 Annexures, with diagrams and a large body of
relevant data. As a castle of sand, the whole edifice which the “Architect” had used