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Auroville: Visionary Images and Social Consequences in a South Indian Utopian Community

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Larry D. Shinn
Larry D. Shinn
Affiliation:
Danforth Professor of Religion, Oberlin College
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Extract

The utopian community of Auroville (‘City of Dawn’) is nestled along the Coromandel Coast of India approximately five miles north of Pondicherry. Though conceived as a harmonious society and city modelled after the integrative philosophy of the twentieth-century philosopher-mystic, Aurobindo, Auroville has been from its inception a collection of disparate settlements embodying social fragmentation not unity. The question this essay attempts to answer is how the ‘unitary vision’ which the founder and the charter of Auroville expounded is related to the social and physical disorder that has characterized Auroville from its beginning. Put differently, if it is true that an intentional community's physical space will reflect its philosophical (or theological) model, what are the underlying concepts or images which have produced the current situation in Auroville? In answering such a question, much can be learned about the relationship between religious ideas and symbols and the intentional communities to which they intend to give rise.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , June 1984 , pp. 239 - 253
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

page 239 note 1 My interest in Auroville was initiated by a visit there in the spring of 1973 and informed by two months of living in the community in the summer of 1975, made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. This paper, therefore, is based upon field notes and interviews with members of the Auroville communities from my trip there as well as upon subsequent research on the writings of Aurobindo and the Mother, and the publications of Auroville.

page 239 note 2 Kanter, Rosabeth Moss, Commitment and Community: Communes and Utopias in Sociological Perspective (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972), p. 43.Google Scholar

page 240 note 1 For a topically arranged bibliography of Aurobindo's writings and secondary works related to those writings, see ‘Guide to Further Reading and Information’, The Essential Aurobindo, edited by McDermott, Robert (New York: Schocken Books, 1973), pp. 250–4.Google Scholar

page 240 note 2 McDermott, , Essential Aurobindo, p. 55.Google Scholar

page 240 note 3 The Mother (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1928), p. 61.

page 241 note 1 ‘A Dream’ is cited in nearly all the books and pamphlets about Auroville. For example, see Towards Tomorrow (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1974), p. 30.

page 241 note 2 Auroville: the First Six Years 1968–1974) (Auroville: Auro-publications, 1975), pp. 90–3.

page 241 note 3 Auroville: the City of the Future (Auroville: Auropress, 1974), p. 8.

page 242 note 1 Sri Aurobindo pamphlet, no author or date. A rather typical piece of literature in that Aurovillians give credit to the Mother for all inspiration and, consequently, do not accept the credit (or responsibility) for current explications of the ‘Mother's will’.

page 242 note 2 From notes of the Conference of World Unity, 02 1975.

page 242 note 3 Towards Tomorrow, p. 8.

page 243 note 1 For an application of the mandala as a dynamic guide to spiritual progress in a Western context see Zinn, Grover A. Jr, “Mandala Symbolism and Use in the Mysticism of Hugh of St. Victor’, History of Religions, XII, 4 (05 1973), 317–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 243 note 2 Auroville: the First Six Years, p. 87.

page 243 note 3 Ibid. p. 82.

page 243 note 4 See Geertz, Clifford, ‘Religion as a Cultural System’, Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religon (London: Tavistock Publications, 1966), pp. 1–46 (esp. pp. 7 and 9)Google Scholar for a good description of the way in which religious concepts and symbols reflect social and cultural realities as ‘models of’ them and likewise act as ‘blueprints’ or ‘models for’ those same realities as they shape them.

page 244 note 1 From a pamphlet entitled ‘Auroville’ (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Society, 1974), p. 8. It must be noted that this maodala never played an active role in the religious or social life of most Auroville settlements.

page 245 note 1 Ibid.

page 245 note 2 In this essay, a distinction is made between mandala as a technical religious concept or specific design and mandala as an Anglicized, functional term (e.g. ‘mandala-like’ or ‘mandalic’;) by underlining and using diacritical marks for the technical term only.

page 245 note 3 ‘Expressions of Auroville’, Collaboration, III (Spring 1977), 15.

page 245 note 4 Auroville: the First Six Years, p. 89.

page 246 note 1 The Mother, pp. 30–1.

page 246 note 2 Collaboration, III, I (Fall 1976), II.

page 246 note 3 Auroville: the City of the Future, p. 17.

page 247 note 1 ‘Auroville: Aurobindo's Shattered Dream’ (part I), Times of India (20 Sept. 1978).

page 247 note 2 ‘Auroville: Aurobindo's Shattered Dream’ (part n), Times of India (20 Oct. 1978).Google Scholar

page 248 note 1 Interview with the founder of Udavi, 6 June 1975.

page 250 note 1 Kanter, , Commitment and Community, p. 1.Google Scholar

page 250 note 2 Ibid. p. 66.

page 250 note 3 Ibid. pp. 113 and 114.

page 250 note 4 Ibid. pp. 118 and 119.

page 251 note 1 Ibid. p. 66

page 252 note 1 The Ritual Process (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1967), p. 146.

page 252 note 2 Turner's application of his notion of liminality and communitas to intentional or utopian communities can be found in Ibid. pp. 131–65.

page 253 note 1 ‘Why Communes Fail: A Comparative Analysis of the Viability of Danish and American Communes’, Journal of Marriage and the Family (August 1977), p. 608 [605–13].

page 253 note 2 As an essay entitled Pilgrimage to the Matrimandir’ (Collaboration, IV, 3, Spring 1978, 13) makes clear, the individualistic and evolutionary model still serves as a foundation for any social progress or unity in Auroville: ‘The center of Auroville, the center of the Force, Matrimandir incarnates the spirit of Auroville. It is a symbol of the inner pilgrimage which each Aurovillian must make to discover his inner being. It is a symbol of the ideal of beauty and harmony which must preside over the collective life of all those who desire to participate in the adventure toward a new consciousness which Auroville represents.’