An exploration of the field of Auroville, village life and gender, the EcoFemme initiative, and the current conflict.
See also Part one of the interview
Witness: How would you characterize “the field of Auroville”? That seems to be an essential attribute, created by the Mother and fostered by decades of residents. In the current administration is that field changing and adapting; is it being harmed or at risk of disappearing entirely; or is it remaining what it has been?
I have a felt sense of the field of Auroville. The feeling that when there are enough people coming together and holding a common aspiration and shared sense of the purpose, this creates a morphogenetic field which can be quite palpable and which can, in time, lead to a quantum shift.
This is, I believe what was intended by the Mother. The conditions in which Auroville has been established and especially the condition that freedom of the soul is essential, is so unique and extraordinary. In Auroville I feel a sense of “heightening,” like everything around you — the people, the land — there is a concentration of shared aspiration for a higher purpose.
One of the things that made Auroville particularly interesting for me — why I gravitated there and not to the Ashram — was its immersion in the nitty gritty conditions of life. There was something for me about the proximity to village life and the bumping into that reality every single day. It kept my feet on the ground and stopped me from disappearing into an idealization. These conditions felt important to me.
Witness: I wonder how the field we’ve been talking about connects to the Adventure community and your sense of Auroville in the emergence of consciousness.
I was trying to find a bridge, and there was a strong inner impulse at some point to connect with the villagers. Not doing so would have felt like a hypocrisy — I could not keep living in Auroville and resent the villagers. Building that bridge meant immersing myself, forming meaningful relationships and understanding the villagers. This led to the birth of Thamarai.
That was essentially an attempt to ground human unity in the day-to-day experience of life; to live an ideal. How do we bridge that with what’s on the ground right next door, that seemed so “other”, so threatening, so foreign? It was a deep inner work to widen and deal with many inner fears.
Gender and culture
The problem with the village, if you like, wasn’t just the village as a whole. We started to break it down and make sense of the fact that what we were really struggling with was the men. We realized that they were very proud and operating from a strong patriarchal frame of reference. We observed that women, the youth, children weren’t getting a voice. We began to see the situation through the lens of systems thinking, understanding parts and how they can work together.
We saw synergies and realized that if we could connect with the youth, maybe that would be a side door in. The youth were really forthcoming. We formed relationships and in doing so, learned to understand their perspective and how to work as partners. That was the template which continued on to Eco Femme.
In between, Thamarai and starting Eco Femme, I worked at Auroville Village Action Group (AVAG) after realizing that we were doing “development work.” I was always afraid we could really make a wrong step, and I was in no illusions about how nasty it could turn if we got it wrong. So in order to understand village dynamics and issues I started to apprentice myself to Anbu and Moris at AVAG who were professional social workers.
That was a revelation. I learned about caste and gender dynamics and how foundational they were to understanding anything about village life. It was there that I found out about social enterprise and this was the stepping stone to Eco Femme.
Eco Femme
For ten years I had been making these cloth pads for Auroville. I thought maybe if we could teach the village women who were learning stitching at AVAG, that we could generate some local livelihood by selling these products. This was the starting impulse. I was also concerned about growing mountains of waste. I began to see how different pieces could fit together with the cloth pad becoming a tool to address pollution, income generation, and how we could add value with educational initiatives for women and girls about their bodies through menstrual health education. I had become a grassroots systems thinker and realized how Auroville had profoundly influenced the way I looked at things. It is so much a part of me now to see through a more integral lens.
Over time, I noticed a big shift in the village situation — prosperity had increased considerably as had health and education. But in terms of mindset, change seemed incredibly slow and this intrigued me. In spite of all the efforts and initiatives to educate and build solidarity among the women in the villages, why does gender violence, rampant alcoholism, and cast-based violence persist? As a western woman, that used to frustrate me a lot! It turns out that shifting cultural norms is very slow work
My twenty years of work at Thamarai, and later Eco Femme gave me a chance to see changes over a longer period of time, For example, I know a young woman who started as a school student at Thamarai, then became an after school volunteer in Thamarai and, after going to Chennai and getting an MBA, she returned to the village and then joined Auroville and our sales team at Eco Femme. Now she mentors and educates village girls and boys about their bodies and is modelling something so powerful based on her own journey.
It’s obvious to me as it is to her, that the way in which she understands the village and the problems and her sense of agency has taken a quantum leap. There are a growing number of such stories. These village outreach projects are long-term propositions. It may take generations before we really see the full-blown fruits, but on the other hand they demonstrate something important I feel, about how consciousness can evolve when certain favorable conditions and opportunities are available.
There were people from the villages who joined Auroville in the beginning for economic reasons, and everybody was very aware of that. And it was always a contentious issue for Auroville: how much of this can we absorb, not just financially, but without diluting too much the Auroville vision? Are they coming for the evolution of consciousness, or are they coming because they’ll get a better job and status.? These questions were always hovering.
Witness: Do you think that what’s happening today may affect the villages? For example the dynamic with the current administration? What you describe is transformational, even if slow.
When I saw the early stages of the conflict, many local Aurovilians were really hopeful and felt that this could help them further some of their particular goals. Some would say “now we’ll get a hospital, now we’ll get a this, or that.” When I look at this through my worldview lens, I think for many they believed that what was coming from the Auroville Foundation Office looked more recognizable and aspirational than what had been happening so far in Auroville and they perhaps thought this progress towards the city was going to work in their favor, perhaps opening up opportunities for jobs with status.
There’s such a mixture. Auroville isn’t homogenous and even within certain cultural groups there is much diversity. There are many shades of grey. I see it through a gender lens as well, and I see different preoccupations between Tamil women and Tamil men. Women are starting to critique the impact of power. Patriarchy hasn’t done them any favors; they’re starting to wake up and ask important questions even if they don’t yet know how to actualize their potential.
What’s coming in appears to be progress but essentially it’s a model of power over others, to control, dominate, keep everything and everyone in its place. I think some are starting to realize that while they may see certain benefits from the growth of a city, something will be lost in terms of the richness of diversity as foreigners are starting to leave.
Witness: You are a member of the Auroville Global Fellowship. how do you see things as they are at present, the view from abroad, in this phase of life?
I do feel that what’s happening in Auroville today is tragic. Freedom is such an essential aspect of Auroville. It is a core part of The Dream, what was intended. Auroville was meant to operate in conditions of freedom of the soul. While Auroville was far from perfect, and there was a lot of chaos and many problems, these challenging conditions enabled innovation and something fresh to evolve. There is no doubt in my mind that it was precisely those conditions that enabled me to discover and explore and express my potential. I wouldn’t have been able if it had all been controlled and someone else decided for me what I should be doing. It’s a great pity that this has been lost.
I think of Auroville like an exotic plant that took root on Earth, with very particular kinds of unique flowers. It was one of a kind and its flowers would need certain conditions to really mature. I have a sense that Auroville’s potential has been truncated. “Bonsai” comes to mind. People will still probably go there and say “Wow, isn’t it fantastic?” Especially compared to what is going on around Earth right now. It’ll still be an interesting, novel place to visit and perhaps live in. But compared to what it could have been, what I have experienced, I believe if it was left more free, it could have been much more.
Sitting now in Australia, I feel that it was an immense privilege to participate in an evolving experimental society. The field was so special and unique. It fed me so much more than here in the West. Now, Auroville is more like a regular place, nothing extraordinary.
But maybe something new will emerge from this big change. Perhaps it is time for Auroville to break out of its borders and spread like a seed, more widely. The Auroville Global Fellowship is a seed, far from realized. The Witness initiative is another. I am a kind of seed, and there are many of us all over the world. For those of us who have left or live abroad, we can carry that Auroville nectar and translate what we have learned and integrate it into the new places we find ourselves. Nothing will ultimately be lost. That’s the story I tell myself.
By Kathy Walkling
Interview on April 19, 2026
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