Auroville, Puducherry, Jan. 20 - Exiled Tibetan Leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama visited Auroville on the outskirts of Union territory of Pondicherry today.

The Tibetan leader inaugurated the newly completed International Pavilion of Tibetan Culture in the premises of Auroville, a community township of various nationalities. Auroville has several such pavilions for different countries.

Around 250 Aurovillians including Tibetans and visitors gathered at the Tibetan Pavilion to welcome the 1989 Nobel peace laureate. Claude Arpi of the Tibetan Pavilion welcomed His Holiness as he walked past the greeting admirers.

In a brief address at a modest function, His Holiness said he was very pleased with the progress made over the years by the Tibetan pavilion and Auroville.

"I'm very happy, my each visit here I found more progress, more development and the most important when I come here the people from the different countries, different nationalities then I felt now here genuine human spirit, the spirit of human brother sisterhood, I think something very sort of alive, that's very good".

His Holiness listens to Claude Arpi as the latter welcomes His Holiness at the inauguration, Jan. 20 Phayul photo/Tenzin Dasel
His Holiness listens to Claude Arpi as the latter welcomes His Holiness at the inauguration, Jan. 20 Phayul photo/Tenzin Dasel
He added, "Now we really need effort to promote genuine human spirit, respect all human being regardless of what their race, what their cultural, what their background, what their faith, that's important".

His Holiness later in the day gave a talk on 'Universal Responsibility and Human Unity' at Tibetan Pavilion after visiting Matrimandir. Around 2000 people attended the talk.

This is the Tibetan leader’s third visit to Auroville. His last visit was in 1993.

His Holiness will address students and staff of Madras university tomorrow.

Phayul.com

Because it’s the closest settlement I have from my temporary home in a guest house outside Pondicherry, it’s natural to be drawn to Auroville, though once you get to know it, there’s disappointingly little to see or do there. You could eat at the cafeteria, or shop at the trendy little stores that, for all that Aurovilians claim about their lack of mercenary incentive, are just a tourist rip-off. Or you could wait for the arrival of a new species of man who will inherit the earth and make it a kinder, gentler place — that generation, naturally, being brought up as an Aurovillian ideal.

I look around to see if this super-species is anywhere in evidence in Auroville, in the babble of voices of people from around the Western world who seem to congregate here because it is a miniature reminder of the habitats they have left behind. They’re dressed in what they suppose Indians wear, only the Indian visitors are very differently dressed from them. The Europeans order garlic toast and pasta and lasagna, the Indians want dosa and biryani. After a few days you can tell the Europeans who tend to hang around here, though the Indian visitors never seem to come back. And the super-Aurovillians are nowhere to be seen.

By a strange fate, my guest house is not in Pondicherry but in Tamil Nadu, though Auroville is, of course, in Pondicherry. It is another matter that it has its own charter and could be its own country. Certainly, you can’t buy land here — the Aurovillians must vet you and decide, after you have hung around for a few months, whether you have the makings of their new race that is interested neither in competition in the workplace (though you need to volunteer to do some work, any work), before they give you free land on which to make your own house, or find you a place in a tree-house that has already been built.

A few thousand volunteers inhabit this space, their children don’t go to formal school, and life from the outside, looking in, seems very, very strange indeed. All Aurovillians are fed free at a huge solar kitchen (any visitor, necessarily accompanied by an Aurovillian, must pay), and though electricity used to be free till some time ago, apparently the rising cost of power required for air-conditioning and television means they must pay for their utilities now. Fortunately, most don’t just depend on their volunteer work but find other means to support themselves for a little bit of money — sometimes also enough to go back home to Europe for a holiday, which, they complain, they find too expensive on their Auroville earnings.

The land around the Maitri Mandir — a gilded geodesic dome in the making for forty years and only just completed — is an enchanted forest. Here, on its uncarpeted roads, if you go after dark, you might come across groups of inter-racial children riding horses late into the night, or others picnicking in the moonlight, or even groups of singers, like heralds, waiting for the new age of mankind to begin.

Alas, mankind seems doomed to repeat the same mistakes, whether in Auroville or elsewhere. One night, in the company of some Aurovillians, we are to go out to dine in some style to Pondicherry, but the choice becomes a debatable issue. We want trendier places, our Aurovillian friends would rather we went to a family diner. In the end the deal is clinched on the issue that we can hardly be around where their children might be out, making a night of it — it would embarrass the kids as well as their parents.

In Auroville as well, the new generation of teenagers seems only to be tawdry rather than superior.

Puducherry Oct 9 : The 40th anniversary of the foundation of Auroville International Project, a city of universal brotherhood, near here will be celebrated in Paris tomorrow.

UNESCO Director General Koichiro Matsuura and the Ambassador and Permanent Delegate of India to UNESCO Bhaswati Mukherjee have organised the events to celebrate the foundation day, a release from Auroville, established by the Mother of Shri Aurobindo Ashram here, said.

A multi-media presention on `Auroville and the ideal of Human unity` and a round table on the topic of `Auroville-an emerging world and its future horizons` would form part of the celebrations.

Speakers from UNESCO and the Government of India and also delegates of the Auroville Township would present talks at the celebration. A cultural programme would also be held at the celebratiuon. The event would be webcast live on http://www.Aurovilleradio.Org/, the release said The Executive Board of UNESCO, whose General Assembly had supported the Auroville project through its resolutions adopted in 1966, 1968, 1970 and 1983, had issued a statement on the occasion of the anniversary celebration highlighting the importance of the project.

The release quoted the UNESCO as saying "Auroville is a successful and unique model project proving the capacity of an international community after forty years of its existence to continue to live up to its initial founding ideals of peace and international harmony and within the spirit of mutual respect and sustainable develoment which are also UNESCO`s own values and principles as well as some of its major priorities`. - Agencies

Chennaionline.com