Written 26 July 2025
Over recent years, I’ve sometimes been told that Auroville’s current conflict opposes two factions, each consumed with hatred, accumulated frustration, and violence. Recently again, I was asked: “Why can’t people from both sides just sit together and negotiate?”
This framing places equal responsibility on both those defending their rights and those supporting the authoritarian takeover, as if the situation were symmetric. It is not. There is no symmetry between resisting oppression and imposing it.
There would be much to say to dispel some of the misunderstandings behind these statements. Here I’ll try to cover just a few basics.
Alternatives Ignored
Yes, people on both sides have become entrenched in their positions. But it’s not as if nothing was tried to bridge both views. In 2021, stakeholders responsible for the Bliss and Darkali forests attempted to find compromises, offering proposals where both the Crown and the forest could coexist. These were simply ignored by those newly in power, and bulldozers were sent instead.
In 2022, the Dreamweaving initiative developed several proposals to bridge conflicting views on the Crown and the city. They were welcomed by the community and, again, swept away by those newly in power. Inflexibility and a rigid interpretation of Roger Anger’s Galaxy concept made discussion, let alone negotiation, impossible.
More recently, the Residents’ Assembly’s Town Development Council started working on an alternative proposal for town-planning, with the help of experts and institutional partners. They faced enormous pressure and were forced to stall the process.
It is also true that some on the community side struggled at times to step beyond their own convictions. In being so anchored to a particular vision, they may have made others feel that any alternative was itself a form of threat. Attachment to fixed positions can be found across the spectrum. But that doesn’t justify the imposition of violence that the administration has spearheaded.
The reality of why dialogue wasn’t possible is that it didn’t fit the timeline of the new administration, who claimed urgency while clinging to an expired vision. “The future is now,” they would say, forgetting that the future they invoke is an old fossil trapped in stone.
Two Forms of Violence
Yes, there has been violence on both sides. But the nature of that violence differs dramatically.
Community members raised their voices or withdrew their warmth from the new administration and its supporters. Some might have used harsh words. But never did they use physical violence or wield institutional power to destroy livelihoods or expel their opponents.On the other hand, the new administration denied visas, expelling people from their homes. They withheld maintenance allowances, directly impacting their opponents’ ability to meet basic needs. They even attempted to send some to jail.
One could say these are administrative actions, not the work of individual Aurovilians. But in reality, it is primarily due to the recommendations and vindictive actions of those Aurovilians who aligned themselves with the Secretary’s office.
Even when filing court cases, community representatives never asked that those acting with the administration be jailed, expelled, or deprived of their livelihoods. All they asked for was that institutional processes be respected and that the voice of the Residents’ Assembly be heard. They never indulged in personal attacks, nor did they seek revenge from those destroying Auroville. They only tried to protect the community’s collective voice and raison d’etre.
The Conditions for Dialogue
At several stages of this conflict, it would have been valuable for people from both sides to sit at a table and talk. And in fact, this was attempted repeatedly. You had the Dreamweaving initiative, the Harmony meetings, the Synthesis group, Confluence, Way Forward, Deborah Nunes’ circles of women, Heartweaving, and many other initiatives I haven’t heard of. These efforts represent years of sustained attempts at bridge-building. It’s important to keep the channels for dialogue open, no doubt.
But for genuine conversation to happen, you need — at least temporarily — to be on equal ground. How can true dialogue and reconciliation occur when some Aurovilians have a gun to their heads? How can negotiation happen when the power imbalance is so great?
I still believe that reconciliation, in one form or another, needs to happen. But first, the direct threats to the lives and livelihoods of fellow Aurovilians must stop.
You can’t reconcile with someone actively trying to expel an elderly Aurovilian simply because he thinks differently. You can’t negotiate with someone taking over an initiative or project you spent twenty years building with dedication and love, and simply expelling you from its management with no reasoning, no explanation, and no willingness to talk. You can’t have genuine dialogue with someone entrenched in an authoritarian and vengeful mindset, because that person won’t be interested in sincere discussion.
Why would they participate if it diminishes the power they enjoy wielding? Why would they sit and talk when all they have been preaching for is precipitated action and urgency? Why would they engage when they no longer see you as a fellow community member, but as someone they want removed?
A Path Forward
It’s easy to call for reconciliation. And yes, reconciliation needs to happen. But it must be genuine reconciliation that leads to collaboration, cohesion, and harmony. For that, we first need mutual respect and integrity.
Perhaps something more is also needed. Perhaps genuine reconciliation requires a willingness to listen for what lies beyond our current ideas about the way forward, and to hold our convictions a little more lightly. Crushing everyone else’s beliefs and aspirations with one’s own projections cannot be the way forward, even less so when these projections are trapped in a past that needs to be carefully updated. Auroville, after all, was not founded on a blueprint but on an aspiration.
Without these essential qualities, any attempt to reconcile would be hollow. And Auroville is the city at the service of Truth, not our individual and fragmented perceptions of it.
By Maël, 26th July 2025