The report One Year Later: Auroville in Crisis & the Way Forward, produced by a subgroup of the Auroville Global Fellowship with contributions from more than 20 Global Fellows and collaborators, and with Fellow David Wickenden as primary author, was published in February 2026.
It documents how the crisis facing Auroville has intensified and accelerated since the Fellowship’s January 2025 report, and situates its findings within the broader context of a December 2025 Parliamentary Standing Committee report that called for collaborative governance and the protection of Auroville’s founding vision. Through analysis of five critical areas — the dismantling of the rule of law, the undermining of Auroville’s economy, the suppression of information, the militarisation of its culture, and the re-engineering of its population — it reveals a deepening pattern of governance overreach that threatens Auroville’s unique value to India and the world.
Building on the extensively researched foundation of the first report, this follow-up offers a forward-looking roadmap for restoring, renewing, and rebuilding Auroville as a living experiment in human unity — through renewed collaboration among its three statutory bodies and the active support of the Government of India.
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This executive summary accompanies the full report produced by a subgroup of the Auroville Global Fellowship and released on 28 February 2026, Auroville’s 58th birthday. Every topic documented in its 2025 Crisis Report has since intensified and accelerated, placing Auroville’s future at extreme risk. This new report distills key findings across five critical areas, presents the landmark recommendations of India’s Parliamentary Standing Committee on Autonomous Bodies (December 2025), and calls on the Government of India to act urgently. You can read the full report here.
Founded on 28 February 1968, Auroville was inaugurated as an experiment in human unity, rooted in Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy and the Mother’s vision of a community dedicated to unending education and the material and spiritual realisation of an “actual human unity.” (Auroville Charter) For over 50 years, it has served India and the world as a living laboratory for social, cultural, ecological, and spiritual innovation, attracting recognition from UNESCO as well as national and international partners and entities worldwide.
Since 2021, a new Governing Board and Secretary have spent more than four years denying Auroville’s achievements, bypassing the Auroville Foundation Act (1988), and actively working to disable and dismantle it. Unless this trajectory is reversed, Auroville will become a hollow shell, which would be an incalculable loss to India and to the world. The Auroville Foundation Act is not the problem. Its three statutory bodies (Governing Board, Residents’ Assembly, and International Advisory Council) were designed to work in balance and collaboration. The problem is the current administration’s assertion of “supreme authority” for the Governing Board alone, while ignoring and actively rejecting the role of the other two statutory bodies. The solution is not to rewrite the Act or reclassify Auroville, but to restore, renew, and reaffirm the Act’s essential principles along with those of the Auroville Charter, which the Act was designed to preserve and protect.
In December 2025, India’s Parliamentary Standing Committee on Autonomous Bodies, comprising 30 members including 16 from the ruling party, submitted Report No. 371 to both houses of Parliament. Its findings validate and reinforce the detailed recommendations of the Fellowship’s original Crisis Report and align with appeals from the Residents’ Assembly, the International Advisory Council, and Auroville International centres. This cross-party parliamentary committee endorsement presents a clear, actionable roadmap for resolution.
Every issue documented in the 2025 Crisis Report has intensified. The 2026 report examines five critical areas in detail:
The full report presents each of these areas in rigorous detail, with specific dates, legal references, and documented incidents. Together, they reveal a pattern of autocratic governance that is antithetical to Auroville’s ideals. We invite you to read it and share it widely. You can find it here.
The Parliamentary Committee’s roadmap fully aligns with the detailed recommendations in the Fellowship’s January 2025 Crisis Report. These are specific, practical measures grounded in law:
The report calls for three immediate actions: CEASE all coercion, threats, and intimidation; RESTORE the Residents’ Assembly’s statutory powers and participatory governance; REESTABLISH the foundational values of the Auroville Foundation Act and the Auroville Charter.
Auroville is India’s gift to the world: a living embodiment of Sri Aurobindo’s vision of conscious human evolution and the ancient Vedic ideal of vasudhaiva kutumbakam, “the world is one family.” Its Charter calls Auroville “the bridge between the past and the future,” evoking the spirit of Taxila and Nalanda, while seeking to manifest that spirit in a new way suited to a new era. The principles Sri Aurobindo articulated throughout his work – Free Progress, Inner Self-Governance, Participatory Governance, and authentic Human Unity – form the bedrock values of the Auroville Charter and the Mother’s founding intention. The current administration has violated every one of them.
By supporting Auroville as a diverse international experiment in human unity, as it has done since its inception in 1968, India has a singular opportunity to demonstrate global leadership. But this will be lost unless the Government appoints a new Governing Board and Secretary who truly understand Auroville’s unique character: people committed to the Auroville Foundation Act and the Auroville Charter, ready to work collaboratively with residents and the International Advisory Council to restore what has been damaged and build the inspiring future that Auroville represents for India and for the world.
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