Auroville Witness

Portrait of Jacques, an Aurovilian La Lettre Bleue: Hello Jacques, you are one of those Aurovilians who arrived in the 1980s during the years when Auroville was being built. Today you are just as enthusiastic as ever. Can you tell us about your journey? Jacques: Let me introduce myself — Jacques, French, who settled permanently in Auroville in 1981 after several stays of a few months. India has always been the country of my heart. At age seven, I had a premonition with the word “INDIA” that stood out in my mind. I discovered Auroville in 1969 at an exhibition...

Previously published 30 April 2026 A “significant sampling” of questions submitted to the Working Committee of the Foundation office, on 23.4.2026. Listed NOT in order of importance! Annapurna farm, ecology and food security: Considering the disastrous ecological consequences of the secretively concluded deal with IIT [Indian Institute of Technology] Madras, and the acute threat it poses to farming and food security of the whole of Auroville — an element given primary importance by the Mother! — and in the absence of any reasonable benefit to Auroville, can you please share what is being done to prevent the planned destruction of...

The continuing chronicle of a diverse passage from Australia to the Mother, meeting Aurovilians, building houses, and settling in.

What the green cover in Auroville means in terms of pioneer afforestation, development, and the right conditions to work harmoniously together.

Previously published 2008 A conversation with Johnny To be perfectly frank, I came here looking for Jan, my wife at that time, and our first child. Our life in Sydney had been pretty turbulent. Although I had been to university and studied architecture, I dropped out of university. I was driving a taxi and we were leading a hand-to-mouth existence, sometimes without food. It was the sixties, a very turbulent society, but in the end Jan decided that I was hopeless and she took Jonas and went to Pondicherry. She had known about Pondicherry through the Theosophical Society. There was...

Ecology brings in a sense of nature as relationships, and recent developments in this field have changed the sense of identity. Milla speaks of the potential uses of fungi and how recent development projects arise from a worldview that doesn’t prioritize nature.

(English/French) Olivier recounts the plan, process, images, and other elements of the movie he is making on the lives of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

Milla walks the reader through her experience of Auroville’s forests, the Forest Group, and fungi as a keystone species.

 Previously published June 2026 They want people to believe that Aurovilians are resisting the building of the city the Earth needs. That we are resisting the consolidation of lands required within the Master Plan area. That we are standing in the way of Auroville’s future. We are resisting. Yes! But not the building of the city. Not the consolidation of lands. Not the realisation of Auroville’s future. What we resist is something else. We resist domination. We resist the concentration of power without meaningful participation. We resist the gradual strangulation of the freedom necessary for a conscious community to evolve....

(English/French) The evolution of an artist and of Auroville’s media, from stills to streaming.