Auroville was born not long before acacia arrived here. Founded in 1968 in the Villupuram district of Tamil Nadu, Auroville was created on the premise of an “ideal  township” devoted to human unity by housing 50,000 people from some 60 nations around the world.  It is one of several attempts at building utopia—other examples include Arcosanti and Twin Oaks, all of which were spurred by back-to-the-land and free-love movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Among these, Auroville is the oldest enduring settlement, and today it is commended by UNESCO as a project of importance to the future of humanity. It’s also an interesting contradiction—embodying at once a different register of time, as well as the pitfalls of unseeing the place where utopia is made. 

The story of Auroville starts with a Parisienne, Mirra Alfassa, who was immersed in yoga and occult practices popular at the time, including the Cosmic Movement. Since childhood she’d had recurring visions of a figure—whom she eventually came to meet when visiting Pondicherry. His name was Sri Aurobindo, an Indian freedom fighter-turned-spiritual leader and the founder of “integral yoga.” Fresh out of a jail sentence in connection with the Alipore Bomb Case against British colonial rule that was initially deemed treasonous (and then judged baseless), he had come to French-ruled Pondicherry (neighboring Tamil Nadu) seeking refuge from the British government. Over time he retreated further into his meditation and Alfassa—whom he proclaimed his spiritual partner and hailed as the “Mother” (an embodiment of the force of Creation)—organized his followers into the Aurobindo Ashram in 1926.  

In a world marked by the atom bomb and US-Soviet hostility, Aurobindo and the Mother felt that humanity was lost. They believed that the way forward would come from India—which they thought of as a spiritual partner to the West’s scientific temperament. Auroville would be this laboratory anchored by integral yoga, a kind of yoga practiced in ordinary life towards a Supramental consciousness, in order to offer solutions to the mess of humankind and hasten the advent of a new species closer to the Divine.

Alfassa anointed Auroville, which is today home to around 3,300 residents, as “the city the Earth needs.” Travel there today, and you can’t miss the signboards emblazoned with the phrase. But Auroville’s growth from the founder to a few thousand was not an isolated phenomenon. 

After Indian independence from British rule, a young nation-state tried to find its way on the world stage. Diplomatic ties with former colonizers seemed beneficial—and Auroville benefitted too. In the new world order the European Union, the French government, the Ford Foundation, and many private European and American citizens were keen to support this idyllic experiment with their money. Hippie culture was in the air and utopias seemed possible—their mission, even urgent. To build Auroville, Europeans and Americans—mostly white—came to Pondicherry, seduced by what the township and its leaders promised. Something different. Over time they hired Tamil people from the surrounding villages as construction labor. And as Auroville expanded, the township bought up more and more village lands that had previously been devoted to subsistence farming of groundnuts or cashew. 

Today these villages—including Kuilapalayam, Moratandi, Edayanchavadi, Kottakarai, and Sanjeevnagar—are called the “bioregion” by Aurovillians. Depending on how you see it, they exist to service Auroville. As one village worker in a big Auroville farm told me, “Without Auroville there is nothing.”

Despite—or perhaps inevitably because of—its spiritual-utopian ambitions, Auroville has always been rife with conflict. The infighting has historically involved two groups: those aligned with ecological restoration and gradual progress, and those frustrated with the slowness of the promised city that has digressed into what critics disparagingly call an “eco-village.” Interwoven with forests, regenerated by Aurovillians over decades, it is certainly a departure from life in other cities—strangled by traffic, construction, and pollution.

A threefold-structure guides Auroville— the Governing Board (appointed by the Government of India), an International Advisory Council (advisory members), and the Residents Assembly (of Aurovillians). All assets are vested in a legal body, the Auroville Foundation, headed by the Secretary. Since July 2021, this office has been held by a polarizing figure, Jayanti Ravi. Her term has been marked by an unprecedented schism between residents, 22 court cases brought by a section of residents against the Foundation, and rescinding of visas to several dissenting long-time Aurovillians who are foreign nationals—most shockingly of Satprem Maini who founded the Earth Institute—with all of this playing out in public. The central contention has been over the construction of a road: should it adhere strictly to a decades-old masterplan? Or should the plan be updated to avoid cutting forests that have taken decades to grow? Now, there are two parallel sets of bodies that operate. Two Working Committees. Two Auroville Councils. One with the approval of the Foundation and the Secretary—and the other selected by the Residents Assembly.

Undeniably, over the last two years, various established groups selected largely through voting by residents like the Funds and Assets Management Committee (FAMC), Farm Group, and Media Outreach have been renamed “Services” in favor of the Foundation, and their staff replaced. Aurovillians on the side of the Foundation (those who favor strict adherence to the Galaxy Plan) were cagey about autonomy allegedly being taken away from the Residents Assembly (those who want a gradual approach prioritizing ecorestoration). In January new modifications to admission for Auroville seemed to confer greater powers to the Secretary, and mandate stricter scrutiny of residents. Similar regulations were gazetted for selection of the Working Committee, selected until now by the Residents Assembly per the Auroville Foundation Act. For this article I spoke with over 60 residents and workers in Auroville with differing views on this conflict. 

This is how things proceeded for a long time: Aurovillians built their houses manually and set about reforesting an eroded landscape marked by red laterite soil. Between 1971 and 2008 they built the Matrimandir (Auroville’s spiritual center, symbolizing the birth of a new consciousness). Governing Boards came and went; a lot of discussion was theoretical because outside of private networks there was no funding. 

The Mother had in 1965 commissioned an architect, Roger Anger, to develop a blueprint based on a sketch she made for the city—the Galaxy Plan. In the center would be the golden-domed Matrimandir. Around it, the Crown Road connecting four zones: international, cultural, residential and industrial. There would then be the “Outer Circle” and Green Belt—forest and farmland creating a buffer between Auroville and surrounding Tamil Nadu-Pondicherry. 

But, as Anuradha Majumdar of the Foundation-recognized Working Committee told me, a “section of people” have run Auroville for many years and delayed building the city towards their own self-interest of holding onto land and a bourgeois lifestyle. Her view was echoed by other Foundation-appointed members of various committees as well as others invested in bringing the city to life without further delay, seemingly no matter the divisions. To reach the kind of no-money economy Auroville was meant to be, associated economists believed it was crucial to reach a town population of between 40,000 and 50,000 for which housing and infrastructure must be expanded. 

“This whole thing about Auroville being a place for karma yoga—it is through the doing, the working together to build the city, that unity will be forged,” Majumdar said. Incidentally with the new Governing Board, the Indian government seems to be extremely willing to support this building—investing up to Rs 1,700 crores—into housing and roads, according to Aurovillians closely associated with the Foundation Office. The government is extremely proud of Auroville as a project, an FAMC member said when I asked why. It is worth noting similar investments across the country into spiritual tourism, particularly the national spectacle of the Ram temple in Ayodhya (replacing the demolished Babri Masjid) which has spent over 900 crore with little oversight, as observed by the Caravan Magazine. 

Meanwhile, various Tamil Aurovillians I interviewed, as well as others (both dissenting and Foundation-aligned), admitted that Tamil Aurovillians have historically not been very active in decisionmaking. 

At the General Meeting called by the Residents Assembly that I observed, around 200 people showed up—among whom I counted less than 30 Brown faces. Sathiya, a Tamil Aurovillian in the Auroville Council, attributed this to underconfidence by Tamils. “If you want to take up work and leadership roles, you will find them. But if you keep to yourself and stay quiet, you won’t,” she said. 

The cultural divide runs deep. Across Aurovillian society, there is a disconnect between English-fluent Western foreigners and elite-urban Aurovillians, and the local Tamil people descended from the bioregion and its villages. The predominant languages of communication, including newsletters, announcements,  meeting minutes,  and signage, were in English—a definite factor of exclusion. That’s despite Auroville’s history, and its reliance on local communities; labor from villages was required to make the land habitable and construct the Matrimandir. Villagers like Sathiya’s father, a welder, were incorporated into Aurovillian status for this exact reason. It also helped that the red tape and expenses at that point were minimal.

“Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But to live in Auroville, one must be a willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness.”

 — The Auroville Charter

Aurovillians cite education and employment in the bioregion as proof of progress. And indeed, without Auroville, women here would have stayed “slaves to their husbands”, Gayatri, 48, a housekeeper, said. With financial independence and respect, some have even left bad marriages. 

Shraddhanjali, a craft-making center (one of 700 units supporting the Auroville economy), is one such bright spot. Kausalya, 45, was in the eighth grade, cycling home to Koothur village one day when she came across a heart-shaped locket on the ground. Opening it, she found a photograph of two strangers in each half: the Mother and Aurobindo. A few years later she began work at Shradhanjali. For 30 years she has worked at the handicraft unit, gathering and pressing flowers, making ornaments and stationary. An interest-free loan of Rs 7 lakh against her salary has facilitated her children’s education. Her story is typical of the women working here who described it as a “close family.”

The nurturing of close ties have historically transcended human relationships at Auroville. Here, “every tree and insect is a gift,” as an old-time forester told me, speaking of the emotional and physical investment into forests in the early years. A recent casualty of land-exchanges has been parts of AuroOrchard, where Jasmin, a long-ago Swedish transplant cares for the cows. One evening under the dark canopy of Sadhana forest, she reflected aloud about why each tree cutting shook her. “Life here is fragile. A lot of the little satisfactions you get in cities are not present here. I am losing out on things by spending my life here—no money, no savings.”

There are over two dozen farms in the township of which the largest are Annapurna and AuroOrchard (both currently part of Foundation-led land exchanges). And there are 44 forests of which I spent time at: Forecomers, Revelation, Fertile, Sadhana, Pebble Garden among others, interviewing stewards, farm managers, hired workers, and volunteers. Arun P. Ambathy, an ex-army man who manages Revelation forest, described stewardship as a “legacy structure—land sequentially purchased in the early days was assigned to someone who protected and cultivated it. It was make-it-up-as-you-go like much of Auroville in its ‘pioneer’ days. Each forest and farm had its own steward—something the Foundation is possibly ushering out citing the yogic importance of “non-attachment.” 

The critical concept underpinning Auroville’s incredible reforestation is ecological succession. “When land is barren, the soil is sterile,” Arun said. “Once a little grass grows, with increasing density, the organic layer of the soil becomes deeper. Pioneer species (like the work tree, acacia) are planted first. These create the initial biomass while other work (fencing, soil, and water conservation) is undertaken. This supports the next stage (fast growing trees), and the next (climax forest—ebony, red sander). This final stage represents the maximum biodiversity and biomass, per unit of land.” To date, half a million saplings across 200 species of the native tropical dry evergreen forest have been planted in Auroville of which over half have reached maturity, leading to valuable carbon sequestration along with water conservation work. 

Overall the idea is to have a “purely ecological approach devoid of anthropocentric assessment,” Arun said. Simply put, land and species (plant, animal, insect) were not to be evaluated according to their utility for humans. Or as Deepika Kundaji, steward of Pebble Garden phrased it, “We found a method of working [towards reforestation] which is simply facilitating nature.”

And yet, last year the new Governing Board suspended maintenance to all farms in Auroville, a move dissenting residents say was punishment for filing a court case against tree cutting towards construction of the Crown Road in the National Green Tribunal. (This verdict was stayed by the Supreme Court in December, as reported by the Times of India.) Removing maintenance means that farms have to pivot to support themselves through products like jams and dairy—something the Governing Board argues is necessary for sustainability. “But Annapurna was not for economics,” Tomas Tomassen, a steward, said. 

In Annapurna, I passed grazing cows, cheeping ducklings, and workers in rice fields with their saris hitched up to wade through water. The ducklings were an experiment to replace high-cost mechanical weeding and herbicide. “They complain that only so many acres out of 130 under crop—they don’t understand that you need an environment to run an organic farm,” said Tomas. “It’s not only about the crop; it’s about water bodies, forest areas, indigenous animals, all kinds of things you need to build an ecosystem. An organic farm is not a field, it’s a whole organism where everything has to be in balance. To build the city of the future they want to go directly to that route of low prices, minimum wages… but this doesn’t work. We have to invest and learn that food is costly.” 

Do you hope to live here for the rest of your life, I asked Tomas, who seemed to me as part of his farm as the cows and casuarina trees. The blue of the sky above Annapurna matched the blue of his eyes which matched the blue of the water in the paddy fields as he laughed, “We somehow felt like in Auroville [having devoted our lives and savings] we will be taken care of. Yeah, that story’s over.”

Writing in her book Saving Time, Jenny Odell describes the inseparability of time and space, and the urgency of learning timefulness—a consciousness of how the world is made by and of time. This draws on indigenous worldviews as opposed to Western abstraction where time is “measured, bought, and sold.” By January, on Foundation orders, trees were being felled again in Revelation farm among others, where I had tracked butterflies; I recalled Arun describing its transition to climax-forest if we let it be for the next 150 years—a view fundamentally incompatible with the Foundation’s register of time.   

Scores of intentional communities have come and gone. Spurred by the climate crisis and failure of the capitalist home-ownership dream, an interest in communal eco-living has only increased. Research finds that enduring communities tend to have a deeper uniting ideology—often spiritual, like in Auroville. It’s crucial for experiments to have a mission. In this, Auroville is no different from organisations and companies that claim to be in the business of changing the world— particularly through a mindset of efficiency, like the Foundation.

I arrived in Auroville some 50 years after its founding, and stayed for a little under a month, reporting this story. Turning off the East Coast Road in Chennai, the car passed a Tamil funeral procession, with its drum beats loud like a beating heart, numerous tourist-trap stalls and guesthouses, and entered Auroville towards the Visitor’s Center. I adjusted myself to the rhythms of life there—quiet darkness by 6pm, the necessity of two wheels to get anywhere, Solar Kitchen, the communal dining hall for Aurovillians where you needed an Aurocard to eat. 

From the first evening I noticed that the service-class—the akkas at the guesthouse who cleaned and cooked and the anna who worked in the garden and did odd-jobs, ladies behind the counter in uniform at the Visitor’s Center boutique, the women behind the counter handling the mad rush at the cafes—were all Tamil locals from the neighboring villages. The customers, the relaxers, the bicyclers, the unit-owners—were largely white or Indians who had moved to Auroville from elsewhere. 

In Auro Orchard I asked Kumudha, like I asked every village-worker I interviewed, what she knew of Auroville. “Everyone is good and very sweet,” she replied. About 37 years ago her family sold 1.5 acres of land on which they cultivated groundnuts and toor-dal to Auroville for 2 lakh (land that today could be worth at least ten times that per the Guideline Value for Villupuram). Now she works 7am to 5pm every day weeding, planting, and composting for Rs 250 per day. She needs an increase in salary which is not coming. Then why call Auroville sweet, I asked. She shook her head, “There are many good places in Auroville but it is of no use to me. Then also struggle, now also struggle. I’m stuck in one place,” she said.

Her answer stayed with me, as did the account of Kandan, a gardener whose alcoholic father had sold the 2 acres of family land to Auroville in the 1970s for Rs 10,000. Kandan wore a grey, holey T-shirt with a hot air balloon on it; his hands reflected a lifetime doing manual labor, growing gardens in Auroville. Did he regret anything, I asked. He laughed. “Yes, because I know how valuable that land is today,” he said. “Some people who sold their land a little later than us sold it for 30 lakh and today it’s worth crores. If I had any of our land left I would have lived a different life.”

Thinking of the creation of a utopia or a model city, and its persistence— I am plagued by this question. Who moves here and who is made to leave? Who must stay “stuck?” Even as visas are revoked from foreign nationals, most still exit the country with the means to live elsewhere. 

The Secretary recommended I read Sri Aurobindo’s address at Uttarpara. It was clarifying on multiple counts, and surfaced a discomfort I felt repeatedly in my conversations there: many foreign Aurovillian’s limited understanding of the country they claimed as home and found synonymous with Hindu roots only. Auroville is beyond politics, they said, echoing the Mother—and yet the things dissenters complained of, like bulldozers, the reconstitution of key positions, disregard for participatory governance, an intolerance for questioning or transparency, and ease-of-business, are all familiar stories in the Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist right-wing ‘New India’ (a common catchphrase of Modi and the BJP to suggest a new dawn for the country, implying that what came before was corrupt, colonial and anti-Hindu), as noted by NBC News. Coupled with the easy appropriation of Aurobindo’s teachings and the precedent set by a Hinduized corporate India in the last several years, it’s a dangerous combination in an electoral region not yet dominated by the BJP. 

What Auroville has offered until now, for a certain kind of person, is the chance to do it yourself. For someone who hungers to work with their hands—for whom it is a choice—Auroville is perfect. 

Every day I was in bed by nine and up by seven in the morning like magic. I achieved perfect stillness. I roamed around in the dark on a bicycle, mostly unafraid, breathing clean air, eyes resting on green forest and following butterflies. I let myself be rescued repeatedly by passersby when I crashed and fell (they shrugged off my thanks saying it’s Auroville). I watched beautiful films at a single-screen theatre. On my last day I spent 40 minutes suspended in silence and felt intensely and unbearably connected to everyone else in the room with me, sitting in two concentric circles in the inner chamber of the Matrimandir. 

Everyone deserves this, I thought. The dream of utopia matters—our attempts to build a better world are vital. But to create something new we must break with the hierarchies of the past and be wary of ideologies we align ourselves with, lest we facilitate more of the same or worse—only this time wearing brown masks. After all—what languages do our model cities speak? What labor practices are employed to grow our food? And, crucially, who gets to decide what the Earth needs? 

At Auroville, the reckoning sees older Aurovilians be ushered out like “invasive” karuvel trees—acacia—by a neoliberal government weaponizing a convenient narrative of decolonization. YouTube onlookers cheered with comments like: “Decolonization of Auroville is under way. Self respecting Indians welcome this” and “In the name of Mother, Europeans are living a comfortable life here.” Meanwhile, laborers remain “stuck.”  I think back to my conversations with Kumudha, with Gayatri and Kausalya, about how Auroville’s transformation required them to serve a vision that has in some ways excluded them. Now as Auroville is gutted in service of yet another model city that overlooks class and caste inequities, as well as environmental regulations, it’s hard to see how India, let alone the Earth, might need this.