Dear Dr. Jayanti Ravi,

We would like to thank you for your hospitality to meet us and the International Advisory Council at your office on February the 18th. We appreciated the opportunity to give personal introductions by each of us as well as the open atmosphere and opportunity to discuss and exchange on several important issues.

Responding to our questions you emphasized that there is freedom of expression in Auroville. This affirmation is very important to us and for our work in our countries. In line with this mutual view and aspiration regarding the ground reality, we would like to ask you:

• To arrange for everyone to be able to use free and uncensored e-mail traffic, as it used to be;
• To allow the editors of News & Notes to be inclusive and include the reports of the RA groups as well, as it used to be;
• To ensure that Auronet is free from harsh censorship, so that it can again become a real hub of internal communication within Auroville;
• To take care to ensure better communication and flow of information to the whole community, built upon Auroville and worldwide recognized standards such as due process, proportionality, sincerity and substantiating allegations.

We all agreed and shared the aspiration that all groups should work together to manifest Human Unity and the City the Earth needs. The Residents’ Assembly, one of the three core pillars of the Foundation, has been crippled. This is one of the reasons why communication between the Foundation and the community isn’t developing in a healthy way at present, which also hinders progress in the building of the City.

In the interest of genuine communication and sound dialogue, in the way that Sri Aurobindo described in Human Unity, which implies that all three bodies are interdependent and thus work together at the highest level, we would like to ask you to restore the Residents’ Assembly and its Working Committee in their proper legal positions. We suggest you consult with the Residents’ Assembly Service which is using the Masterlist to control the eligibility of who is allowed to vote. We encourage you to update the Register of Residents as soon as possible. The update may resolve any speculation that the lack of progress in the update prevents residents from expressing their voice in community affairs.

There is also the all-important issue of ensuring visa security for those who live here and those from abroad who are supported in their plans to volunteer or settle in Auroville by our AVI Centres. We support you in your wish to encourage and attract young people from all over the world to participate in building Auroville. A key factor for people coming, and staying, is the housing need and the assurance of a reasonable period of ongoing visa stability. Can you offer them the housing and visa security to make our work for Auroville sustainable?

We all expressed our support for the Dreamweaving process. We have provided some support for the operation of this process. You invited us to encourage the Dreamweaving process, which could also be applied in other fields of Auroville’s community life. As regards the City building, we understand that this collective process has been abandoned in favour of an authoritarian approach to city planning, characterised by a lack of communication, damaging effects and negative results for the current mobility in the city.

Our recent initiative to invite both groups working on town planning to sit with us and talk together about the current state of play regarding the Dreamweaving results unfortunately failed. The ATDC, the internal working group of the Governing Board, did not want to join a meeting with the TDC selected by the Residents’ Assembly. Therefore, we urge you to do all in your power to reinstate this work in a genuine way and in the spirit of the original process. This would engender a far greater support from the community for the planning of the city. We are still in favour of applying the approach of the Dreamweavers and look forward to the results of the Heart Weavers as well.

Finally, we would like to ask you to give clarity about the position of Friends of Auroville as they don’t picture in the new Housing Policy document. Does this mean any change in their status as stewards?

Looking forward to your answers and into designing a constructive way forward towards re-creating Human Unity in Auroville and building the City the Earth needs,

Yours respectfully,

Christian Feuillette AVI Chairman
Friederike Mühlhans AVI Secretary
For the Board of Auroville International (AVI)