Neutrals
(Amrit:) “From 1977 through the early 1980's the seeds were sown for the formation of what was to become the ‘Neutral Group’. Scattered throughout Auroville, though tending to concentrate in the communities of Certitude, Gratitude, Pitchandikulam, and Hope, we were individual Auroville residents whose only commonality was a discomfort and disagreement with the unfolding train of events leading to increasing hatred and intolerance beginning to embroil the Ashram, Auroville, and the SAS.
In 1977, we participated in a loose association called the ‘Prosperity Group’, so named after the system established in the Ashram by the Mother to provide for material needs. Confronted by a ‘Collective’ more and more hostile to those in the community unaligned with its ideological viewpoint, especially represented by the French and supported and aggravated by Satprem, we pooled our resources in an initial attempt at self-protection. Shyam Sunder, at the time a member of the Prosperity Group, unfortunately attempted to place it under the auspices of the SAS, leading in less than a year to its premature collapse. Nonetheless this Prosperity Group was to become the basis for what was to develop about five years later into the Neutrals.
There were numerous incidents, clumsy attempts by the SAS to suppress the movement in Auroville for greater autonomy and freedom: the cancellation of visas, the arrests and jailings of Aurovilians, the harassment of those in the Greenbelt dedicated to reforestation by gangs of local men hired by the SAS called the ‘watchmen’ and the beatings and physical attacks, as described and enumerated in more detail by Savitra in his book, Sun Word Rising, written from the point of view of the Auroville Collective. ...
Like lemmings in a fury of action and reaction, the SAS and the Auroville Collective rushed with the inevitability of destiny, falling precipitously over the cliff of mutual self-destruction. For according to the old dictum, hate begets hate and violence begets violence. And with hate and violence, scapegoats are sought to channel fear and anger, eventually engendering the birth of the Neutrals – a group formed by those unacceptable to both the Collective and SAS for their contrary views.”[1]
(Amrit:) “Scapegoated as the concentrated epitome of evil and everything wrong in that darkened circle of communal dementia, we were the ‘non-believers’ and ‘heretics’, the dissident minority abused and scorned, to be excoriated and expunged. … Ostracized, surrounded and suffocated by this atmosphere of hostility and hatred, barely considered human, I could hardly ignore the parallels to the situation at birth [Amrit's birth in an internment camp], seemingly far back in another reality.”[2]
(Amrit:) “One evening I attended a music concert in the primarily French community of Aspiration, and was seen engaging in a brief conversation with D. The next day, in a meeting held at Tapaloka, the home of an American couple across the small grove next to my own residence in Certitude, D., then a member of the Auroville administrative group called the Cooperative, was hauled before the meeting and forced to recant his association with someone accused of being a ‘black magician’.
Shaken to the core, he approached me just after for one last time. Being rather intellectually and literarily oriented, D. compared his experience at the meeting to events in Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, about the Salem Witchcraft Trials during the 1600's in the US, when many accused as witches were burned at the stake. ...
For many years, this was the last conversation and contact we had, for like so many others, he chose to follow the will of the Collective rather than honor the bonds of friendship. ...
Some years later while passing through New York to California from India, I again made brief contact with D., who had by then left Auroville for good, and in the short conversation he proffered his heartfelt apologies: “I thought I could change them by joining them, but instead, I changed and became like them...” ”[3]
(Amrit:) “From this period, ostracism took firm footing and became the official policy adopted by the Auroville Collective. Those still members of the community, to remain accepted, were prohibited from contacting and speaking with all of us now under anathema of interdiction. We were shunned, condemned, and scapegoated for the ills suffered by the Collective.
Except for a very few, also ostracized, who continued to cherish loyalty and courage of conviction, most immediately dropped us as social lepers, bowing to the Collective will. And many who could not accede, simply left – like J., a small and gentle resident of the Greenbelt. Attacked for continuing to see her friend Jo., on meeting me briefly in the Pondicherry State Bank, she sadly confided, “We Buddhists do not belong here in Auroville...” meaning kindness and compassion no longer have a place. Very soon, she departed for Australia.
Most others, however pained in inner conscience, seemed to have no other choice but to conform to the Collective directives. D.S. for example, one of my closest friends, a kindly and soft-spoken Canadian and Matrimandir co-worker known from the first day of his arrival in Pondicherry, confided in tears that we could no longer see each other. Explaining that he would lose everything, his work and food allotment necessary to support his family, if he continued his association with me, D.S. Confessed feeling like a Judas betraying friendship. I comforted him that all would pass in time with the relationship put only temporarily in abeyance.
About a month later, in passing, D.S. commented, “I'm beginning to understand their point of view.” After some time, running into him on a main thoroughfare in Pondicherry, a distinctive change could be detected. “You have no place in Auroville. You must go...” he remarked. Emotionally distraught, in the middle of the busy street, I almost burst into tears, “But we have been friends for so many years, how can you say this?” He only stared coldly.”[4]
(Amrit:) “As explained by another American, N., the epitome of a balanced good nature, “We put so much pressure that either they break and join us, or break and leave.” Employing such methods of psychological warfare and intimidation, my neighbors amazed me with their endurance. In their unremitting and tireless efforts to expel me, they tried to shatter my resolution by deliberately shouting a continuous stream of threats for what seemed months on end stretching into years. Hoping to instill fear and insecurity, they knew full well their voices next door could clearly be heard, “Oh, he's ringing his [puja] bell again, we have to cut his water and his electricity...” In one incident, when a friendly soul surreptitiously passed on to me a few of the rose plants presented to Auroville by Madame Zivkova, the daughter of the Bulgarian president, F. angrily tore the plants out of their pots.”[5]
(Amrit:) “As the madness intensified, so did the sense of unreality. One day surely, I would awaken from this nightmare of illusory demons taking material form to torture and torment. In these circumstances the Mother, Panditji, the Puja, and the few remaining relationships appeared the only vestiges of sanity and sources of solace.”[6]
See also