A description of the familiar cruelty and blaming the victim toward Aurovilians who are in exile, and how it is one more in a sea of falsehoods coming from the administration.
Previously published Sept 2026
Power Corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely – Lord Acton
There is something monstrous, inevitable and revealing about Anu’s latest screed against the use of the word “exile.”
Monstrous because I have personally heard the use, by Aurovilians, of the words “exile” with tears in their eyes, grieving at the loss of their beloved home. These are people who have dedicated their lives to the service of Auroville and the sincerity and pathos with which they feel exiled and pushed out is moving. Yet Anu proclaims that they are not exiles, no, they can’t be, because they can return on a tourist visa, revealing the coldness behind so much of contemporary Auroville. The Aurovilians leave broken hearted, hoping for a better elsewhere because the social contract whereby they gave their lives to Auroville has been violated.
Early on in this conflict the late Daniel of Tanto fame wrote a piece on Auronet titled ‘Being Jew again’ (presumably long since airbrushed, but I have a copy of it) noticing: Lately I started to feel different again. The feelings that I had as a Jew in Europe are the same that I have now as a foreign Aurovilian. No matter what you give, with all the sincerity possible, you do not belong and if you want to be tolerated there are conditions. The analogy of being Jewish in 1930s Germany is one I and others have felt and is of course easy pickings from the likes of Anu with a “who is being murdered?” dismissal. But what Daniel picked up with his heritage is why the word “exile” is accurate, and also the second skin of knowing when you do and don’t belong.
There is a familiar cruelty while reading Anu’s piece. First disparage and destroy the reason people gave their lives to Auroville, then when they leave in sadness and disgust, feeling exiled, forbid them from even justifying their reason for leaving or using words like “exile.” Not content with having won the power struggle, they now have to blame the victim, as all good narcissists do, for the very situation that has made them leave. This is an inevitable consequence of the seeming “victory” that they have in Auroville. As Auroville inevitably declines into becoming a government department, the blame has to get ever more outrageous to justify what they have done to the community.
From one perspective it’s actually quite astonishing that Anu should feel the need to complain about something as innocent and particular as the use of the word ‘exile’ by people who no longer live in Auroville (perhaps another word would describe why they have reluctantly left a place they love? What could it be?). The takeover of Auroville is about power, and its insatiability, and it is not satisfied with having pushed people out in the manner they did, it cannot bear any counter narrative.
As someone who was bullied through my childhood, this continual vilification of the other is familiar. All bullies have a keen psychic sense of where they can be attacked. So “exiles” are attacked for two reasons. Firstly, because it indicates an underbelly to their victory, a threat to the narrative she has been glued to, that the takeover at whatever cost is a return to the Mother’s vision for the city and not that it pushed out many creative, sincere and dedicated servants of Auroville. Secondly, because she simply can. Any bully knows this — you trip up the kids with glasses as they run past you, you tease the fat girls, because you can.
One of the reliefs of exile is that the likes of Anu with her cruel and controlling worldview no longer have the power to affect our lives. Another benefit of exile is not having to put up with what can feel like a constant and never-ending sea of falsehoods. There are so many cuts to the body of Auroville and Anu’s polemic is simply the latest attempt to tell us how to feel, think and be manipulated by the use of words. It’s tiring simply trying to keep up, even from a distance, but there is a relief in not going along with the falsehoods and being able to speak out.
An Aurovilian in exile
September 15, 2026
Previously published in News & Notes No. 1143 Sept 17, 2026