Auroville: A Visit to Paradise
(Note: David, Akash, and Jessica are pseudonyms.)
Today, I visited Utopia. It turns out that Utopia is not the Elysian Fields or the Kingdom of Heaven, but a town 10 km from the Indian city of Pondicherry: Auroville. Founded in 1968, Auroville was intended to be a hippie communist society for people of both genders, all religions, and all nationalities.
The quickest way to get to paradise from Pondicherry is to take an auto rickshaw. Upon arriving at the visitor center parking lot — autos are not allowed any further — I saw that Paradise was crowded with visitors. After reading a series of slick English posters describing Auroville’s vision, the mostly Indian visitors are herded into a fenced off passageway leading to Matrimandir: the golden spherical meditation center in the middle of town.
The passageway to Matrimandir is a red dirt road flanked by a lush green forest. The forest is entirely artificial, planted one by one by Auroville members over 30 years. The greenery gives the air a sweetly pleasant, almost perfumed smell, a far cry from the pollution of India’s cities.
Matrimandir itself was underwhelming. We could get no closer than a hundred meters, an extensive network of rope and fencing preventing us from getting any closer. Within the hundred meters between us and Matrimandir, there seemed to be nobody except two lonely gardeners, probably hired locals, working on the lawn. At the viewpoint, a few dozen visitors stood around, taking pictures in various poses before leaving.
I decided I was hungry and headed for the Solar Kitchen, Auroville’s collective dining area. After a few false starts trying paths blocked by fencing, I finally made it onto the road leading to the Solar Kitchen. I was in Auroville proper.
It was striking how empty Auroville was. The red dirt road carried a few bikes, motorcycles, and auto rickshaws here and there. (For the first time in India, I saw women giving motorcycle rides to men, and not just the other way round.) The road was surrounded by trees, often with a walking path running parallel two meters away. Buildings, pedestrians, and even street signs were a rare sight. It reminded me of a nature preserve more than a town. In hindsight, this is not surprising — Auroville has 2800 inhabitants spread over 20 square kilometers.
The Solar Kitchen was already closed by the time I arrived. The buffet was empty, and locally hired women were cleaning up. I made my way to the second floor, where Cafe La Terrace was thankfully open. This cafe had everything you’d expect in a cafe: coffee, tea, sweets — but also pasta, dosai, sandwiches, and salads. It was also quite expensive, with a typical lunch or dinner costing 250 rupees. (By contrast, it is possible to get a good non-vegetarian meal at a typical Indian restaurant for 80 rupees.) I got a tomato pasta, but could not pay for it because I didn’t have an Aurocard, Auroville’s attempt to create a cashless society. The cashier asked David to pay for me in exchange for my cash, and he generously agreed to help.
I had lunch with David, an older white man from the Netherlands who came here after retiring from his psychologist career. He was surprisingly frank about the negatives of Auroville, saying there are many problems visitors don’t see. First, he wanted to be a teacher, but Auroville pressured him into becoming a psychologist to help with the community’s mental health problems. However, instead of being paid for the job, he has to pay Auroville for the privilege of being a psychologist. Second, on a societal level, Auroville was supposed to be self sufficient. 50 years after its founding, it is nowhere close to that goal. Auroville could not survive without financial support by the government of India and Auroville supporters around the world, not to mention the accumulated wealth of residents like David.
I asked about governance: are there elections? He said there are elections for various councils, but none of them have real power. Real power lies with the government of India. I later discovered that the town was governed by its founder through the Sri Aurobindo Society until her death, after which a dispute arose between the residents and the Sri Aurobindo society. The residents appealed to then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi for help, and she sided with the residents, taking control of the town. The Society filed lawsuits in protest, the Supreme Court sided with the government, and the rest was history.
I was wondering about the dominant religious or political philosophy. David said that many people around the world want freedom, but once they get it (as they do in Auroville), they don’t know what to do with it. True freedom involves accepting responsibilities, which Aurovillians’ mindset still haven’t evolved to accept gladly. People still have too many prior convictions, he said. This prompted me to ask about his religion. He doesn’t have one, but was not an atheist. In fact, he considered atheism a religion. He said the real God is unknowable, beyond human comprehension. God permeates the entire universe, including each and every one of us — an idea that reminded me of the Gaia hypothesis and panpsychism.
I asked what he does in his free time, thinking a resident of paradise would have an interesting answer. He doesn’t. He said he doesn’t have much free time due to work, but when he does, he meditates. He rarely meditates in the Matrimandir, however, and just stays in his house.
Lastly, I was curious about the economy, so I asked how it worked. Are there are private businesses, for example? He said there are, and that the businesses pay a third of their profits to Auroville. I described it as a tax, but he said it wasn’t quite accurate. He also laughed at the notion that Auroville is a moneyless economy. The Aurocard is nothing but a debit card, and all restaurants and stores require payment in rupees.
I had many more questions for David, but he needed to run to a meeting, so I started roaming Auroville again. After walking for what seemed like an eternity on a red dirt road with sparse traffic, I arrived at an intersection with a street lamp in the middle that doubled as a piece of modern art. I couldn’t make heads or tails of the art, so I kept on going to the library. The library was an unimpressive one-story rectangular white and orange building. It was also closed, presumably for Christmas, though the sign made no mention of holidays.
I continued walking and met Akash, an Indian tourist from Hyderabad working at Google. He had been in Auroville for five days, and was on his way to the library. I told him the library was closed, so we explored Auroville together in the remaining hour I had in the town. Akash kindly answered the many questions I had about India, ranging from Tamil nationalism to British rule. (For the curious, he said that Northerners speaking Hindi in Tamil Nadu will often get a reply in English; and that the British greatly helped India by uniting it and bringing it to modernity, but also plundered a lot of gold and treasure.)
We visited Humanscapes, a housing complex close to the library. It was a charming collection of several houses, decorated with arches and flowering plants, with the central part of the complex occupied by a terraced depression filled with grass. One sign read “Residents only”.
We then visited Savitri Bhavan, a building with a photo gallery of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Akash had already been here, but showed me around while answering my questions about his Auroville experience. The gallery had photos of Auroville’s founding and of the Mother’s childhood, among many others. Supposedly, the Mother had shown signs of exceptional spirituality even as a child.
My final stop in Auroville was the Unity Pavilion, a building which, according to the Auroville website, exists “to promote understanding between individuals, cultures and nations”. True to its mission, outside the Unity Pavilion is the “universal earthen wall”, where 98 layers of dirt from 27 different countries were put into a single transparent container to commemorate Auroville’s 50th anniversary. The Unity Pavilion was also where I met Jessica, a retired professor of recreational therapy in British Columbia, who is now in Auroville for an extended visit.
I wanted to see Town Hall, listen to a lecture, eat at more restaurants, talk to more Aurovillians. Unfortunately, my time at Auroville had come to an end, and I had to leave for Pondicherry to board a bus to Chennai. Akash would later go to a sound therapy session where special instruments combined with the room’s acoustics made sound reverberate throughout the participants’ bodies, and to a Sufi music session where participants twirled around as fast as possible.
What should we make of Auroville? What lessons does it hold for dreamers and utopians everywhere, people dissatisfied with the world as it is?
Auroville is undoubtedly a great place to live. In sharp contrast to most Indian cities, it is clean, green, prosperous, and has fantastically fresh air. Cafes and restaurants provide delicious meals and drinks, while daily lectures offer enlightenment and entertainment to the residents. Auroville also has a positive impact on the surrounding towns. Aside from giving them a free refuge from the chaos and pollution of the cities, it hires 5000 local laborers, and the tourists and residents it attracts boost the economy of the surrounding areas.
However, all of this is only possible for three reasons. First, Auroville strictly limits who can live there. Aspiring residents must go through a 12–18 month probationary period before becoming a true Aurovillian, and this status can be withdrawn under exceptional circumstances. Second, Auroville receives immense financial support from outside. Aside from a contribution by the Indian government, it receives donations from Auroville supporters around the world, from tourists staying at guesthouses, from new residents as an initial donation, and from existing residents as a monthly contribution. It is estimated by Auroville Today that 35,000 USD is required to start a life in Auroville, compared to India’s GDP per capita of 2000 USD. Third, Auroville is situated in a poor but stable country. This allows it to use its wealth to hire local laborers to do the gardening, cooking, and cleaning.
All in all, Auroville reminds me of a gated community more than the moneyless gift economy of communist lore or hippie dreams. Protected by the guns of India’s police and the nuclear weapons of its military, funded by money made in rich capitalist countries, owning 8000 square meters of rent-free land per inhabitant, using cheap local labor to do much of its menial work, and strictly excluding undesirables, Auroville can sustain some version of paradise. Here, as elsewhere, Utopia is not for everyone; it is only possible for the rich.