Auroville: A Utopian Paradox

Abstract

Auroville is a small intentional community in South India with a population of around 2000 people. It started out as a utopian experiment in 1973 and today is a small close knit community engaging in sustainable practices. Like all other utopias that were celebrated around the same time, the vision for Auroville was dictated by a single individual. Auroville adheres to the larger universal ideal of utopia – non ownership of land, abolition of the power of money, centralized dining hall, rotational community work to avoid boredom, unending education etc, yet there are certain intricacies that are unique to this intentional community. Through this paper, I would like to focus on the basic principles Auroville was laid out with, and today after forty years gauge its success or failure in realizing its utopian goals. All utopias are based on places and people, on striving to achieve perfection or a better world for humanity. Idealism is fundamental to any utopia yet the degree of its manifestation decides whether it is perceived as a utopia or almost on the verge of being labeled as a dystopic society. Just after the Partition (1947), when India was looking for a new direction on how to take charge of its political Independence, the mammoth task of arranging the administration of the country and its economy lay in front of the new Government. Two distinct cities were being shaped based on two very different ideas of urbanization. One was imposed by political will and one by voluntary service. One right above in the north, close to Delhi which was to be a new administrative capital of India to decongest Delhi, and provide identity to the State of Punjab which lost its Capital to Pakistan. Chandigarh (1951), so meticulously designed by Le Corbusier was to be this new ideal city, a forerunner to all future cities to be designed in India. At the same time, further down South, on the borders between Pondicherry1 and Chennai there was a reaction by a group of people who were looking for an alternative, more humane and peaceful Society. This was the birth of Auroville – the ‘City of Dawn’ which was envisaged by a French woman, Mirra Alfassa, (more commonly known as the Mother or La Mere), a disciple of Sri Aurobindo Ghosh, and designed by a French Architect, Roger Anger (1923-2008). 1 Even though India gained Independence from the British in August 1947, Pondicherry was still under the jurisdiction of the French who ceded to India its full sovereignty only on August 16th, 1962. It came to be administered as the Union Territory of Puducherry from July 1, 1963.