Sri Aurobindo was a Revolutionary who was placed on trial for his life by the British. He moved to Pondicherry- a French enclave- in the belief that he'd be able to carry on his Revolutionary activity. But the Brits had penetrated the Revolutionaries' networks and were very successful in getting informers into their homes. It turned out Aurobindo's own cook was a spy. It became clear that the Brits had only released Aurobindo so as to be able to identify his accomplices. Henceforth, Aurobindo devoted himself to spirituality and developed some new type of Yoga.
The BJP's genealogy features the older generation of Revolutionaries who were also propounders of Hindu philosophy and spirituality - Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Savarkar etc- and who led a celibate life. Modi and Yogiji uphold this tradition. It is natural that the BJP will wish to develop 'Auroville-' a community supposedly dedicated to Aurobindo's ideals- which in the political sphere were quite sensible. Sadly, Auroville is now a shitty little senile cult. It has zero connection with Aurobindo's fiery Nationalism and spirit of self-sacrifice for the Nation.
Why does it even exist? The answer is that France was forced to hand over its enclave to India in 1954. However, the de jure transfer took place only in 1962. A few months later the French lady running Auroville came up with a plan for an 'international township' there. France got behind this- and got UNESCO, whose H.Q is in Paris, to back this loony-toons idea- so as to show that they hadn't really been forced to hand over French territory to brown peeps. Actually, they were creating an 'international' space. Indeed, some of this space was annexed from the former British territory in Tamil Nadu! Thus, in 1968, Air France flew in soil from 100 countries for the inauguration of the 'Mother's' senile dream. The timing, however, was good. Plenty of hippies were milling around. Suppose Steve Jobs, who came to India to meet an immortal Godman who, sadly, died almost immediately, had turned up there and stayed for a bit. He could have given the place a few Apple shares and it would soon have been as wealthy as fuck. Sadly, the place was run by shitty shitheads. After 'Mother' died in 1973 factionalism prevailed. The natural 'Indian' successor- Poddar may have wanted the place to expand along rational lines. The hippy dippy 'Europeans'- ineffectually led by the French nutter 'Satprem'- wanted complete autonomy. Mrs Gandhi sided with the Europeans perhaps because she thought the trajectory of the Bengali Hindu Revolutionary tradition was towards the Ananda Marga whereas she herself was perfectly prepared to be Durga. In any case, the Jan Sangh were for Poddar and the Indian Ashramites whereas senior courtiers favored the Europeans though perhaps this was merely so as to enrich themselves off those credulous fools.
Still, whichever way you look at it, the GoI had been lobbied by the White residents to take the place over. But GoI is just as bureaucratic and shitty as Auroville which later came under the control of the 'philosopher' Kireet Joshi who had resigned from the IAS because the work wasn't boring and corrupt enough, in order to dedicate himself to the even more boring and vacuous swindle represented by Aurobindo's shite. Thanks to shitheads of this sort, the Auroville Foundation was a marriage made in Hell based on swindling credulous foreigners and some deracinated urban Indians while exploiting captive Tamil labor.
Because of its ties with an elitist, Colonial State machinery, Auroville, swindling its residents and illegally buying agricultural land, got its hands on 3400 acres on which it was supposed to start building a Township of 50,000 people. GoI went along with this fraud in the belief that it would earn foreign exchange for the country. Instead it got saddled with a money pit which swallows up a few million dollars of Government money so as to benefit about 3200 useless cretins half of whom are elderly foreigners.
It should be emphasized that Auroville Master Plan, aiming for a community of 50,000 by 2025, was prepared and ratified by the Residents Assembly on July 28, 1999, and after passing through the Governing Board, the Ministry of Human Resource Development in February 2001, was gazetted by the Auroville Foundation on August 16, 2010.
An efficient IAS officer of Tamil origin has been appointed Secretary of the Auroville Foundation. She hopes that knowledge based industries will burgeon and tourist potential will be realized. That's why a road is being constructed and optical fiber is being laid. The place need not be a boring, senile, cult. The problem is that the fad for utopian townships has come and gone. Most people want 'eco-villages' because 'smart Charter cities' are sprouting up all over the place and tech savvy peeps will end up living in them anyway. But they might like to get away every winter to an eco-village. It remains to be seen whether Auroville goes back to sleep. The problem is that it will be taken over by the indigenous people. After all, you can make money selling the timber of trees you cut down. Also rape and robbery are viewed as recreations by some young people.
Gautam Bhatia, a Delhi based architect of startling stupidity, objects to what is happening. Is he for the 'eco-village' or is he a true believer in the 'Master Plan' of Divine Mummyji? I can't tell. He has an article in Open Magazine denouncing the Government for its dastardly plan. But he makes no substantive proposal of his own. This is because he is as stupid as shit.
IN 1963, A FRAIL French woman Mirra Alfassa
she had came to Pondicherry 50 years previously because her husband, a Colonial Civil Servant, hoped to be elected to the French Parliament from there. Mirra was useful to Aurobindo because her brother was an even high ranking Colonial Civil Servant who was able to frustrate the British request that Aurobindo be handed over to them. To be clear, Mirra represented French Colonialism though, no doubt, she had deep spiritual interests of an utterly crazy kind.
who goes by the title ‘Mother’ decides to build an ideal city just north of Pondicherry.
She failed. To be fair, she was 85 at that time and had pretty much withdrawn from 'outer activities'
A follower of Sri Aurobindo, the intent behind her monumental and ambitious venture is to create a geographical centre, part urban part rural, where people from all over the world will live together to express ideas of humanism, self-reliance and integration, the likes of which were never practised before.
Nothing of the sort transpired.
Inaugurated in 1968 with participants from 120 countries, the new township’s progressive approach applies to every possible global challenge known: politics, ecology, agriculture, afforestation, education, health, conservation, public law, social behaviour—all setting a path to innovation and self-discovery.
1968 was peak hippiedom. It was plausible that Auroville could earn a lot of foreign exchange from the better class of European tripper. But those guys wanted Indian spirituality, not some bombastic shite peddled by a Jewish lady who died in 1973. Since she had no charismatic successor, Auroville rapidly degenerated. Its population fell or turned senile. The kindest thing to do would have been to turn it into a designated forest area and encourage its hebephrenic residents to climb trees and evolve into monkeys. But the kindest thing isn't the most just thing- which would involve making that land useful and productive for the indigenous population who were unjustly deprived of it by an evil foreign Empire which enslaved and trafficked Tamil people.
Fifty-five years later, in December 2021, a set of bulldozers ram an authoritarian ambush into the peaceful community at 1AM. A midnight knock.
'ram an authoritarian ambush'- that's Gautam Bhatia's idea of fancy English. Which was the 'authority' which was being so 'authoritarian'? The answer is it was Auroville’s Working Committee which sent in the bulldozers. It appears a lady named Anu Majumdar- who has been a Resident since 1979- was a prime mover. This initially happened during the day. Then, because of protests, the mid-night manoeuver was resorted to. Sadly, Auroville's 'Youth', being very elderly, are light sleepers and came running to protect their playground. Nevertheless, there were no less than 6 genuinely young Aurovillians (i.e under 30) who were very scared and who screamed loudly and soiled themselves in a grandiose and Galactic manner.
Backed by the local development council,
Initiated by the Auroville' Working Committee.
the destruction of the centre and the hacking of a thousand full-grown trees are meant to send a political message, that a new India is on the march and multiculturalism of the liberal kind would not be tolerated.
Gosh! That Anu Majumdar must be one nasty Nazi! Yet, this dancer/novelist is more, not less, hippy-dippy than any 'Delhi based' architect
In a community made up of multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-culturally diverse citizenry, the fear of the state’s single-minded commercial and political agenda seems justified.
'Mother' wanted a city for 50,000 people not a bunch of shanties for 3200. Anu Majumdar has written a book outlining the vision behind the Model Plan. Sadly, she seems to want it to turn to reality. That means more roads and less trees. However, if Auroville does not deliver, the indigenous people will take possession.
Peaceful protests are first ignored; later dozens of outsiders are bussed to intimidate the residents.
The alternative is that they have their heads hacked off once the Naxals provide leadership to the local people.
So as not to leak legitimate news of the demolitions, a local media service is forcibly shut down.
What 'local media service'? Does this guy mean Auroville's 'Outreach Media Centre'? Its head, an Australian woman, paints a horrible picture of the place. Nobody helps their neighbor. When she broke her arm, a friend had to fly down from Pune to look after her. Meanwhile, women were warned not to go out at night for fear of being raped. Some Dutch dude was robbed and killed by locals. Sadly, they failed to rape him. India has much to learn in matters of gender equality.
Only when the National Green Tribunal steps in, does the threat stop.
So, there is no fucking authoritarianism here whatsoever. The Auroville Working Committee sends in bulldozers. One faction of residents protest. They get the Green Tribunal involved. The same thing would have happened if one developer was trying to fuck up the plans of a rival.
How does a minor defenceless community of seriously ambitious ideals protect itself from a bulldozing behemoth?
Sent in by its own Working Committee.
Sadly, in India, the experimental quest for a utopic existence remains an unquenched thirst.
There are plenty of very successful Ashrams in the area. Sadhguru's Isha Yoga Center is bigger and has expanded across the globe. It currently has 11 million followers and a quarter of a million volunteers. Meanwhile Auroville has stagnated. Had 'Mother' had a charismatic successor, Auroville could have gone global. Instead it turned into a senile cult catering to a dwindling number of cretins.
Doubtless, there are all over India people and places on the brink of extraordinary discovery, research and invention. In Tamil Nadu, the concerted testing of agricultural strains may provide future bountiful harvests;
But that sort of research aint happening in Auroville. The place is a shithole.
northern research institutes test cloned and grafted vegetable and fruit varieties which will provide better yields with little water; a belt of solar panels in Gujarat is the largest renewable energy power unit in the world;
but locals aren't happy. That is the key. These sorts of places need to provide good livelihoods and expanded life-chances for local people. Compare Auroville to the Amrita Foundation created by 'Amma'- the 'hugging mother'. She was born into a poor family of fisher-folk. She has created a University which is climbing the rankings. Local people want Medical and Engineering Colleges and hope to gain employment in ancillary knowledge-based industries. Auroville could have provided all this starting in the Seventies itself. Instead it turned into a sclerotic, senile, cult.
a medical experiment in the mountains seeks to deliver aid and precious equipment to sites and villages inaccessible by road. An NGO in Odisha connects illiterate tribals to their government entitlements—access to banking, employment, free rations.
But Auroville just uses local people for ill paid menial work.
It is hard to deny that at the oddest, often most unlikely of places, multiple acts of generosity and optimism are taking place.
But not at Auroville. That's why Anu Majumdar is trying to get it back on track.
But there exists the other less emancipated India, where churches and cathedrals are regularly robbed and idols smashed,
and where Hindus are subject to ethnic cleansing or forcible conversion where they are not the majority.
and large parts of the local minority populations continue to live fearfully in ghettos.
In Delhi, sure- because Bhatias tend to beat the shit out of Muslims who try to stab them. But there is no such problem amongst the Tamil people- save where Hindus are becoming a minority.
Children in village schools still trudge long distances to empty teacherless classrooms.
Auroville, like most Ashrams, does provide schools for local people. But numbers are low and the thing is not scalable. However, it could easily be made so.
Its own schools cater to about 200 kids in total. Back in the early Seventies there were 600 kids. This is a dying community. It could have been a center of excellence with increasing returns of scale and scope.
In summer, malaria and waterborne diseases kill regularly.
While Auroville residents keep getting raped and robbed.
In the slums of Mumbai and Delhi, increasing unemployment is driving many to more audacious forms of crime.
The residents may not be rich, but they will increasingly become the target of local people if no development occurs and no jobs are generated for them.
In the food warehouses of Maharashtra, while farmers face certain famine,
Bhatia thinks Maharashtra faces famine. He should complain to Rahul Baba whose party is propping up the Shiv Sena's corrupt rule there.
rats and field mice are fed well and regularly. In some cities, 30 people with empty pots line up at a hand pump, adjacent to a house boundary wall concealing a swimming pool where water is on a constant filter for its two residents.
But it is swimming pool guy who pays more money into the Exchequer. Chase away the productive and poverty worsens.
How can the two diverging realities be placed in a common mixing bowl? Is it even possible to create a liveable reality out of such a contentious mess?
Not if we rely on cretins like Bhatia.
For that, the controlled experiment of a city becomes the only possibility. In its six decades, Auroville has
stagnated.
gratefully thrown everything into the blender: ways of growing 100-year-old forests
in 60 years? How?
as well as quick-yield vegetable farms,
as opposed to what? Retarded zucchini?
a mix of people from 60 nations,
but they are all shite
and another diverse mix from their host nation; a religious pluralism as accepting of Hindus, Muslims and Christians as Mormons, Buddhists and Atheists;
provided they are cretins and hand over money and labor to the cult
a clutch of people from the French White Town and more from the local Black Town;
Bhatia is a fucking Racist shithead. 'French White Town' indeed! No doubt he thinks of Tamils as niggers.
combination of Tamil rural expertise, and German inventiveness from the Ruhr valley;
Germans aren't inventive. They are industrious. Anyway, nobody who is inventive would join a stupid, senile, cult.
philosophies of Sri Aurobindo and the occidental logic of Martin Luther;
Martin Luther? The guy who said of the Jews ' "First, set fire to their synagogues or schools'? That's the occidental logic this racist cunt is into?
plant knowledge of traditional south India; the irrigation practices of the American Southwest;
are irrelevant. India is too densely populated. President Kalam had visited Auroville and there was some notion that it might provide local leadership for water harvesting, waste recycling, micro-irrigation etc. Nothing happened. Auroville should have relaunched itself before the financial crash and gotten its hooks on some of the silly money that was floating around at that time. It missed the boat.
construction techniques that utilise steel as easily as mud;
Fuck is this guy talking about? Steel is easier to use than 'mud'. There's a good reason architecture is considered a low I.Q profession.
ways of cooling houses through inexpensive and passive local methods adapted to the efficiencies of Western mechanical systems;
Leave the door open. Better still don't have doors or walls. Just climb a tree.
visual and practical ways of primary schooling,
as opposed to poking the kids' eyes out
and barter community service as a form of local currency.
Why not use cowrie shells as a store of value? Better still just climb a tree and throw bananas at each other.
The whole premise relies not on some continual practice of conventional reform, but a complete and explicit rejection of all existing norms.
Which is why there is so much rape in Auroville. Existing norms re. not fucking Bhatia in the ass are rejected there.
At Auroville, the difficult path of achieving such lofty—and always contradictory—goals
You can't achieve 'contradictory goals'. Architects may not understand that. Everybody else does.
had to tread a careful structured plan, a stipulated four-step approach.
Which is exactly what didn't happen in Auroville.
PLACE: First and foremost was the establishment of a visible entity, a physical place for the active application of ideals.
Nope. First you have to have a plan and then you have to get a bit of money together. Only then can you think of getting a 'physical place'. Architects may not understand this.
It started on 22 square kilometres along the northern edge of Pondicherry.
Territory grabbed by French Colonialists.
A barren site for constructing a settlement close to the city and to the coastline that took its inspiration from Sri Aurobindo’s hope that humanity is a form of transience moving and aspiring to a better world.
That was not a 'hope'. It was a belief or credo.
As a universal township, Auroville would be a physical manifestation of that goal. The presence of citizens from 120 nations on Inauguration Day attested to the strength of the idea that the city belonged to humanity as a whole.
There were supposed to be 50,000 smart people there, not 3000 senile cretins.
In its six decades, Auroville has gratefully thrown everything into the blender:
but the blender wasn't turned on. Also it wasn't a blender. It was a latrine.
COMMUNITY: Next came the structure of common living, the setting up of a home base where people reside, engage and work together. The city as a perennial resource to a natural life surrounded by an extensive greenbelt, farms, botanical gardens, seed banks and newly planted forests.
These guys did establish a 'botanical garden' some 20 years ago. But their motivation was to prevent real estate development. This meant that Auroville needed more and more subsidies from the Government and NGOs and credulous donors.
Within the perimeter come new ways of harnessing energy, creating water catchment areas and natural dams.
No. These guys planted some trees. That's not exactly a high IQ activity.
Cooperative farming and shared skills of home construction take the experiment into a new lived reality.
It is a lived reality of stupidity and dogma.
SOCIETY: Third is the move towards further cohesion as a society, the creation of a public life in the city.
What fucking city? The majority of rural Tamils live in villages with a larger population than Auroville. But they get much less money from the Government and have a much more adverse population to land ratio. Why? They have dark skin.
The ambitious agenda can be daunting at an urban scale but the wider civic plan envisions a series of radials that divides the land into pie-shaped sections for education, recreation, industry, culture, etc.
But these senile cretins haven't made it happen. All they can do is plant trees. The next step is to climb them and slowly evolve into monkeys.
Within the clustered groupings of buildings are activities for baking and pottery,
Wow! That's real high I.Q stuff!
schools and health services, community centres, parks, recreation and society offices.
Yup. They have a lot of bureaucracy. You have to pay the authorities about 3 dollars a day to stay there. But because the place is so shitty, accommodation and food are cheap. Indeed, if you work half the year in the West you can while away your winter in Auroville. Thus, but for the bureaucracy which makes you wait two years for residency, the place could easily scale up. However there is a housing shortage. Au fond, this is a place which could scale up very quickly and with an energetic Tamil IAS officer in charge of the Government side of things, people like Anu Majumdar can make something of a place which is sliding down-hill.
Why is Auroville such a shithole? One answer is that it is 'protected' by UNESCO. But not everything associated with that turd is utterly shit. The other answer is corruption. Elaine Catherine, an Australian Aurovillian, told Slate magazine- . “I paid 31 lakh (roughly $48,000) to the Housing Committee as a mandatory donation for my house five years ago. Later I found a photo of the house in an architecture magazine, and saw it had been sold for 13 lakh ($20,400). I don’t know where that money went. I don’t know who controls the funds,” she explained to me, with a hint of frustration.
Slate's reporter writes- I couldn’t figure out who controlled the funds either. Although Auroville doesn’t have a self-sustaining economy—most Aurovilians either come in with savings or leave for a few months to work in their home countries—Auroville has a lot of money. On top of the steep donations Aurovilians pay to become “stewards” of their houses, the Indian government donates tens of millions of rupees each year. As do private donors, and visitors when they come.
Can Auroville become a safe place for women? Sure, if it develops properly. People like Anu Majumdar and the new lady IAS officer in charge can make it happen. This may deeply grieve Gautam Bhatia. But that fucker is fucked in the head.
Slow to develop over 20 years, the area acquires essential services where residents meet regularly, contribute labour or goods to the community and in turn collect basic needs for daily life.
Why can't they simply climb trees and throw bananas at each other?
CULTURE: Finally, the philosophical centre of the township is a monumental magnificence, the Matrimandir, a golden metallic structure,
It's a fucking gold plated golf ball.
its spherical shape designed in earthly measures to be entirely directionless, without any cardinal orientation and rising heavenwards to celestial connection. As the Mother explained: “[A] symbol and space that aspires to man’s aspiration for absolute perfection”.
So, the thing is a typical mid Seventies cult turning a profit on gullible hippy-dippy types.
SO OPEN AND idealistic in its conception, it was hard to contest the view in any rational terms.
The rational way to contest a 'conception' is to say 'sixty years have passed. Why have you guys achieved nothing?
Human drives in vastly different forms and historical eras have pursued life’s possibilities beyond the scope of realisable limits.
In which case, those human drives failed. Dudes flapping their arms didn't really soar into the air like eagles.
Following from Thomas More’s Utopia—an exploration of 16th century English society
More wasn't reflecting English society at all. For example, he gave each household two slaves. There was no slavery in England then.
where people learn to live a common life, without private property, abolish caste and class, avoid war, disparage all show and finery, and tolerate all religions.
Bhatia hasn't read More. He hasn't even read the wikipedia article on More. There is chattel slavery in More's Utopia. There was no such thing in Tudor England. Serfdom had disappeared centuries ago.
Bhatia next mentions some crazy architects with visionary plans.
IN THE PAST century, the American search for a utopic life has differed vastly from the ambitions of more earthbound societies like India.
Nonsense! Noida looks American. It does not feature skyscrapers made out of mud. India is poorer than America. But it has a space program and nuclear weapons and a booming software industry. Meanwhile Bhatia and Auroville are stuck in a time-warp.
How can the euphoric visions of singular individuals—architects, engineers and inventors—ever compare with the wholescale battle of ideas deliberately condensed by thousands of contributing citizens into the finite acreage of a new city?
The answer is that if 'the singular individual' is really smart and comes up with a well thought out plan then everybody can get behind him though, no doubt, a few antagonomic nutters like Bhatia have to be told to fuck off.
Auroville grew from thousands of seeds planted on infertile ground, ravaged by dissonance, filled with hope, destroyed by arson and hurricanes, embroiled in local race battles, struggling to test new economics and barter systems, but in the end rescued by the promise of a new life.
Rescued? It fucking drowned- though, no doubt, some clique lined its pockets in a corrupt manner.
An urban experiment always on slow boil. Its nearest Western counterpart was an ambitious urban plan initiated in the US, parallel to the Auroville timeframe, called The Great Society.
This man is truly stupid. An ambitious Social Welfare program has no connection whatsoever with some fucking hippy dippy cult.
Then US President Lyndon B Johnson’s initiative was similarly linked to creating equity in American cities: reviving inner city education, eliminating drugs and poverty, enacting legislation on local services, setting standards for housing, clean air, establishing cultural centres and new acts for wild life and environmental protection.
Nonsense! LBJ wanted to help the hillbillies and rednecks and trailer trash who voted for him. Sadly, the Republican 'Southern Strategy' turned LBJ's flock against the Party which abolished Jim Crow.
So wide was the scope, so solid the strength of its political reach, it even raised ideas on the role of beauty in urban life, the necessity of public art, and the quality of citizenship.
Sheer fantasy! LBJ wasn't a fucking hippy. This is a guy who liked giving orders to his subordinates while taking a dump. Still, he had to sanction money for the Arts which went to White middle class elites. This further alienated traditional Democratic voters paving the way for Nixon.
While The Great Society struggled within the marginalised framework of America’s inner cities, Auroville began as a whole new venture.
The Great Society helped the traditional White working poor but, sadly, it also benefitted African Americans and even Hispanics. This led to the backlash which put Reagan in the White House.
Its imperfections grew from within, to make apparent to its legislative council that all was not well with the original idea. Originally, all physical assets of the city belonged to the Sri Aurobindo Society, but in 1980, under the new Emergency Provisions Act,
which was passed because of corruption in the Society. It was the Residents who bit Indira's ear off and got her to impose this 'Emergency' provision. The Act states- pursuant to the complaints received with regard to the misuse of funds by Sri Aurobindo Society, a Committee was set up under the chairmanship of the Lieutenant- Governor of Pondicherry with representatives of the Government of Tamil Nadu and of the Ministry of Home Affairs in the Central Government, and the said Committee had, after a detailed scrutiny of the accounts of Sri Aurobindo Society, found instances of serious irregularities in the management of the said Society, misutilisation of its funds and their diversion to other purposes;
the Indian government took over the city management. As of now, the city has only 3,000 residents, despite the original intention of making it grow to a sizeable 50,000.
Because it is still a corrupt shithole run by a fucking hippy dippy cult.
What is the truth regarding its 'outreach' work? How does it compare with the average Ashram?
Several employment schemes for women in surrounding villages have been activated and are successfully run under a variety of activity centres like the Auroville Industrial School,
That sort of thing can be scaled up. It can more than pay for itself. India has a lot of cheap labour. But there is a shortage of skilled workers for local industry.
Auroville Health Services and schools for local handicapped children.
Again, this should not be viewed as 'Charity'. There is a lot of money to be made in Health Services. Indeed, Auroville could become a hub for medical tourism.
The search towards a shared economy and communal harmony continues in hope-filled programmes like Reach for the Stars—scholarships for higher education for village children.
But, if they can make more money robbing and raping- that is what will happen. A few scholarships won't tackle the underlying problem.
In retrospect, the larger picture has been formed in perennial optimism: the successful testing of sustainable architecture, creative farming, water purification and conservation, renewable energy application, community education and healthcare, art and craft revival, localised monetary exchange, and the political governance reduced to a simple amplified message: when humanity’s aspiration is perfection, the city belongs to no one and to everyone.
Except that isn't what is happening. Money is still disappearing in an opaque manner. How long can you continue to fool a few Western cretins? They can Google Auroville and get to the Slate article I quoted. They will realize that they won't actually get title to even an inch of Auroville land when they pay 50,000 dollars for a house. They are simply 'stewards'. The Foundation owns everything. But the Foundation comes under the Central Government's Ministry of Human Development. It could turn over the place to cow-worship or Modi worship or anything else it likes.
That Auroville still continues half-a-century since its inception is the surest sign that
some cretinous clique is making money out of it in a corrupt and opaque manner
humanity desires inevitable and perennial movement towards that singular ideal.
Humanity desires perpetual youth with lots of money and sexual opportunities.
Throughout the early phase of locating a site, building, setting standards of community life, congregation commerce, schooling, and public engagement, there was bound to be confrontation.
Things fell apart after Mummyji's death. Factions complained against each other vociferously till, finally, the Government had to take it over. Indira liked Mirra. Her dad had been a big fan of Aurobindo.
The dissimilarities between the new settlers and the old settled could not be more glaring; that the setting was an impoverished illiterate rural setting in south India, instead of a rich suburban commune in northern California, ensured that there would be racism, cultural unrest, and clash of ideals. Without these, the perfect community would remain either a pipedream or a walled project in isolation.
Sadly, it can't afford walls which is why women can't walk around at night. Bhatia, however, can't get ass-reamed even in a bath-house. Sad.
Auroville’s most critical lesson is the only possible course for any future city in India:
It has a population density of one person per acre.
what we build now will dictate the difference between surviving alone, or living well together.
Will what Bhatia builds collapse on your head? That is the question is his clients should be asking.
Any attempt to physically destroy the city now will be an erasure of 50 years of constructed imagination. India needs more Aurovilles not fewer… Instead, it gets Chandigarhs and Gandhinagars and smart cities;
In other words, it is getting the kind of places people want to live so as to earn good money. Interestingly, a Bina Bhatia, who studied at Columbia, has a paper in which she says Le Corbusier's Chandigarh failed for the same reason that Auroville failed- viz some shite about local conditions or sociological realities. The truth is Chandigarh succeeded. A million people want to live there. Auroville failed. I wonder whether Bina Bhatia is related to Gautam Bhatia? At any rate, she is younger- i.e. less stupid. She notes 'The youth are the best critiques (she means critics- her English is Gautam level shite) of Auroville because they do not see Auroville or Mother’s ideals as an experiment unlike the people who created it, but live it in today’s realities. Frustration is apparent as explained by a youth interviewed by Virya, ‘In Auroville, youth are not meant to exist and many residents seem to think that youth should just disappear.’ ‘The main issue is that the community has not accepted the youth as being part of it. They are despised or at best ignored by the community and seen as only bringing problems.’Mother visualized the education system to be an eternal learning process, open ended, where each child could chose to learn what he wanted. Today, the youth of Auroville face pressures from all over - to be moral, ideal and altruistic because of their ‘Auroville brand’ but also to compete with their peers in the rest of the world equipped only with an education system barely recognized by the rest of the world . Eventually, most leave Auroville to other countries for studies and employment.'
A little later Bina writes- 'After, Auroville’s popularity declined, and it wasn’t receiving funds or media coverage as before, it resorted to self-advertising itself. This was required for its survival to keep receiving funds but this has almost resulted in Auroville trying to brand an ‘image’ and keep up with it by not allowing others to see beneath it. It has used every possible mode of media, to project a positive image of it, justifying its actions in its newsletters, monthly papers and website and conceal any negative aspects. Living there for a few days, one can easily see the nature of this hypocritical branding. For instance, while it advertises itself as a settlement free of drugs, alcohol and other vices, the use of the same is profound in most parties and pubs on its outskirts are filled with the very same people. While its website preaches economic equality, and individual value over material wealth, it is a known fact that the affluent can choose where they want to live. A youth interviewed once said, “Making money is almost taboo…yet nobody listens to you if you don’t have the money.”
So, all in all, this is a corrupt, senile, cult which wants its members to just keep drinking the Kool Aid. Kids, however, are welcome to fuck off. Kalki Koechelin was lucky her parents quit Auroville for Ooty.
it gets facile makeovers of secondhand ideas; it gets token signatures of history and melodrama in Amravati and Raipur.
Amravati is back on track. The local villagers are delighted. Indians like their own history. They don't like whatever shite Bhatia is peddling.
The serious steps to questioning urbanism, architecture, soil ecology, greening, afforestation, and conservation have not appeared in 70 years of independent building. There is nothing radical in glass cities that evolve out of computerised efficiencies
Yes there is. Stuff like that could not have existed in ancient times.
—but it is wholly so when 18,000 trees nurtured over four decades transform the ecology of an arid place.
Humans have been planting trees for thousands of years. There is nothing radical about it.
It hardly matters that utilities are on a power-sharing grid, but it does matter when electricity is made entirely renewable and often not needed at all. Such answers came not from a reform of existing structures, but a rejection of the old and replacement with an altogether new approach. For that reason India’s urban future needs multiple such experiments, numerous communities that can rise above the failures of current civic models and propose new ways of living.
India does need renewable energy and water harvesting and waste recycling and so forth. But this 70 year old cretin can't supply it. Nor can Auroville as it is currently constituted. People who have to go back home to work six months in boring jobs so as to return and hand over cash to a corrupt clique who don't have the skills and organizing ability to do very much.
Of the more than 60 nationalities represented there among a large population of Indians, the hope of continuity was echoed by 82-year-old German Frederick Buxloh as he stood watching the bulldozers noisily working into the night. Having grown up under Hitler’s Nazi regime,
He was born in 1940. By the time he attended kindergarten, De-Nazification was in full swing. The little fellow kept getting sent on tours of Dachau and Aushcwitz and told very firmly to suppress his hereditary tendency to commit genocide. Thus he was cool with becoming the devotee of a Jewish lady who would be sure to smack him down if he started building gas chambers and rounding up non-Aryans.
and a direct witness to the violence of war and racism, he spoke with sad and quiet eloquence: “After trying to understand what possessed the German race to commit such brutality,” he said, “I came to India. No other country had the wisdom and tolerance that I found here.”
Or the corruption or bureaucratic sloth or the fucking craziness of its Godmen and Godwomen.
After living in Auroville for 54 years, in Frederick’s mind the country’s ancient vision is suddenly being questioned and put to test. “What’s happening right now is shaking me to the core.”
What's happening right now is that a Model Plan which the Resident's approved is being implemented after a 20 year delay. This is shaking Freddy like anything. Having lived for 60 years in India, he thought no Plan could ever implemented there. Trees may grow and the people might climb them and quietly turn into monkeys. But he'd be dead by then.
No comments:
Post a Comment