Sri Aurobindo Society (SAS)
(Savitra:) “The Sri Aurobindo Society, founded in 1960 under the then General Secretaryship of Navajata (previously known as Keshavdev Poddar) had been entrusted by the Mother, Auroville's founder and technically President of the Society, with providing the initial apparatus necessary to set Auroville upon its own momentum. Located in Pondicherry, it represented an organization through which Auroville, which had no legal status of its own, could be recognized. It was the repository for all of Auroville's land deeds and, being the initial recipient of full tax-exemption on the basis of Auroville, it was its channel for funds. Consequently, it was the representative intermediary for Auroville with outside agencies such as UNESCO and the Government of India. Thus the SAS could serve in Auroville's earliest stages, prior to the presence of an internal organization, as a provisional stable framework, both legally and economically, though which basic administrative tasks could be handled.
The primary objectives of the SAS, before it had been entrusted with the initial sponsoring of Auroville, had been the collecting of funds for the Ashram as well as the maintenance of its own extensive network of centres and conferences and programs. In its new role, it would also assume the overseeing of Auroville's financial affairs until the collectivity had reached the sufficient stage in its own development when it would express its conscious aspiration, its conscious will to assume its own responsibility. Until that time, the SAS operated Auroville's “General Fund” – a Fund which was comprised of the contributions of Aurovilians who theoretically had turned over all that they had and who in turn were to be supported by the Fund, as well as contributions which came in from other sources, public and private, including several large Government grants in those formative years. This Auroville ‘General Fund’, managed by the SAS, was under the particular domain of its then secretary, Shyamsunder Jhunjhunwala. He was the counterpart to Navajata.”[1]
- ↑ Savitra, Sun Word Rising, p.100
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