NOTE TO USERS This reproduction is the best copy available. ® UMI Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Auroville: Philosophy, Performance and Power in an International Utopian Community in South India by Shanti Pillai A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Performance Studies New York University January, 2005 Richard Scheduler Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 3157848 Copyright 2005 by Pillai, Shanti All rights reserved. INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. ® UMI UMI Microform 3157848 Copyright 2005 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. © Shanti Pillai All Rights Reserved, 2005 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. What is it that defines the human species? A nexus of circumstances: speech, bipedal locomotion, brain size and complexity, social organization. Let me add another quality to the list, performed dreams. Richard Schechner (1995: 263) The world is now too dangerous for anything less than utopia. Attributed to R. Buckminster Fuller Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. DEDICATION For J; always my good friend v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project began in 1996 and finished in 2004. There is not one step of that eight-year process that would have been possible to take without the help and support of many, many people. My first thanks goes to the Auroville community and to its many residents who were exceedingly generous with their time and input. I am grateful to everyone who lent me a hand during my stays and to all my interviewees. Special gratitude goes to Bindu Mohanty, Carel Thieme, Selvaraj Damodharan, Roger Harris, Wim Aspeslagh, Ganesh Gothandapani, Shankar, Kathy Walkling, the staff of A V Today and the community of Aspiration. Thanks also to Bob Zwicker of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives. My gratitude goes equally towards my committee members, who shaped my thinking about Auroville. First and foremost, I extend my deep hearted thanks to my advisor, Richard Schechner. Without Richard, I would not have done the project that I did and in the way that I did it. As a person of wide experience, with a generous heart and a soft spot for the utopian, Richard has been a model for me both as an intellectual and a person. I am also very grateful to have had the fortune of being the student of Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. Always generous with her busy time, Barbara’s input was indispensable for me in formulating my project, particularly with respect to making the whole idea of “performance” an effective vi Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. analytical tool, and not just an object of study. Barbara Browning’s class about feminist ethnography, in addition to her own work, were important models for me in strategizing my fieldwork and choreographing the dance between ethnography, gender and faith. I am also very grateful for the insightful comments of my outside readers. It has been nothing short of a great honor having the opportunity for feedback from Richard G. Fox, whose work on Gandhi and issues of cultural innovation were a direct source of inspiration for my project. And I am deeply grateful to have had the benefit of commentary from Andrew Rotman, whose creativity, sharpness and integrity make him a role model for me in many ways. I would also like to express my gratitude to other teachers whose input was particularly formative. Much thanks to Deborah Poole for her guidance during the proposal-phase of this project. Also thanks to May Joseph and Allen Feldman, with whom I had the pleasure of studying during their time in Performance Studies. In their respective ways they helped me greatly by encouraging me early on to pursue this project. I would take this opportunity also to acknowledge that this project was made possible with the generous support of a junior fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies. I am grateful to Rick Asher, Pradeep Mehendiratta, and Pappu Rao for their help in arranging things in India. A special note of gratitude goes to my parents, Becky and Parameswaran, who introduced me to Auroville in the first place. Surely without them, this project vii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. never would have been. I am also very grateful to both of them for all they have done to provide me with a fantastic base of operations in Pondicherry. I am very grateful to Peter Heehs, independent scholar and archivist of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Peter was extremely generous with his materials, input and time. Much of my work bears the imprint of our fruitful dialogue. Many of my closest friends gave a lot of support and stimulation for my work in these years. I will always be very indebted to Xavier Andrade for pushing my thinking in new, creative directions, for shaping me as an ethnographer through his own excellent example, and for accompanying me throughout much of my fieldwork. Thanks also to my Performance Studies partner-in-crime, Chris McGahan for reading sections of this dissertation, for generously helping me with more things than I could possibly name here, and for always looking out for me when he reads the New York Times. My gratitude goes to my very best friend, Seth Cook, without whose companionship I could not have done this project or much else for that matter with any kind of sanity or humor. Lastly, I would like to thank my friend Jothi Govindaraj, whose experience, wisdom, and wit gave me the faith to see a lot of things in a different light. viii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the relationship between ideals and everyday life in Auroville, an international utopian community in South India. Auroville is located in a rural area outside Pondicherry, a former French colony in Tamil Nadu. It is presently home to 1,800 people from 35 countries and aspires to one day become a city of 50,000. Several thousand local Tamil village people provide most of the labor. Based upon the teachings of the Indian political leader and philosopher, Sri Aurobindo Ghose (1872-1950), Auroville was founded in 1968 by Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual collaborator, a French woman known to devotees as the Mother (1878-1973). Its goal is to facilitate the spiritual evolution of the whole planet by striving to establish human unity. Although Auroville began from nothing in a barren land, today it constitutes an important model for ecologically sustainable development. It receives significant support from the Indian government, the European Economic Union, and UNESCO. Using a concept of “performance,” I ethnographically examine the processes through which Aurovilians collectively interpret the Mother’s direct instructions for Auroville and Sri Aurobindo’s writings in general as they go about the community’s everyday business of enacting a specific vision for a more perfect society. I look at the “social life” of central texts, and in particular the relationships of power that frame how these texts inform lectures, public meetings, ritual, ix Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. conferences, and the construction of urban spaces. In so doing I demonstrate the ways in which the ongoing formulation of Auroville’s communal identity is shaped by multiple, contradictory aspirations and realities. In developing a performance studies approach, this work offers a new perspective for understanding the central dynamics of utopian social experiments. It also presents a unique case study for examining the ethnography of reading. Finally, Auroville is a site from which to rethink essentialist assumptions about “Indian culture” and “spirituality,” since its founders and philosophy were shaped by early processes of globalization, and because its international residents live in close proximity with rural populations, formulate visions of both regional and national forms of Indian culture, and participate in traditional Hindu practices. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vi ABSTRACT ix LIST OF FIGURES xv LIST OF TABLES xvii LIST OF APPENDICES xviii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCING AUROVILLE 1 What is Auroville? 5 Auroville’s Founders 5 The Philosophy 10 Differences Between Auroville and the Ashram 16 Physical Layout 20 Coming to Auroville 46 Everyday Life 49 Auroville’s Culture 56 Economy 64 Organization 69 The Significance of the Auroville Case Study 76 Thinking About “Community” 76 Why Performance? 88 The Performance of the Ethnographer 95 Looking Ahead 110 xi Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.