Abstract

The utopian community of Auroville is nestled along the Coromandel Coast of India approximately five miles north of Pondicherry. Though conceived as a harmonious society and city modelled after the integrative philosophy of the twentieth-century philosopher-mystic, Aurobindo, Auroville has been from its inception a collection of disparate settlements embodying social fragmentation not unity. The question this essay attempts to answer is how the ‘unitary vision’ which the founder and the charter of Auroville expounded is related to the social and physical disorder that has characterized Auroville from its beginning. Put differently, if it is true that an intentional community's physical space will reflect its philosophical model, what are the underlying concepts or images which have produced the current situation in Auroville? In answering such a question, much can be learned about the relationship between religious ideas and symbols and the intentional communities to which they intend to give rise