They wanted to go back to the land and voluntary simplicity

Home > Journals & Media > Journals > Auroville Today > Current issue Archive copies Auroville Experience April 2007 Exploring our differences: a round table discussion - Alan Seven Aurovilians explore the effects of cultural conditioning to see if there are new ways of experiencing our diversity.

Most Westerners do not have their parents living with them. How is this perceived by the Tamil community? “For us,” says Suryagandhi, “the family is like a banyan tree held up by the new roots and there is an expectation that children will look after their parents when they grow older.” Thulasi recalls being asked by a village woman why she was staying in Auroville when her parents were living in Sri Lanka . “‘You have to look after them', she told me. It almost made me feel guilty, as if I should go back.” Priya notes, however, that some Indians consider that the Westerners must really love India if they give up even their families to come and live here.

Priya herself admits to being “very confused” concerning where she fits in. “I was brought up in Tamil Nadu but spent ten years in America . I'm neither Indian nor Western, I'm somewhere halfway, struggling with both roles. So when my mother decided to come and live in Auroville, there was this expectation that she would eat with me and everything. But this hasn't happened much because I want to retain my independence. So even if I fall sick I won't tell her, although if she is unwell I will definitely go and look after her.”

Then there is the issue of family loyalties and hierarchies. Shankar and Thulasi point out that they cannot call even elder members of their family by their names as that would be considered disrespectful. And while Suryagandhi asserts she has no problem in publicly disagreeing with her brothers-in-law if the occasion demands it, she seems to be an exception. Priya remembers from her days of living in Aspiration how the eldest Tamil brother is always deferred to by other members of his family.

Thulasi recalls that from childhood she rebelled – against her culture, her nationality, her religion, against marriage. “It was only when I came to Auroville that I found it easy to follow my own process and that was because of the distance between me and my family. So I wonder how easy it is for locally-born Aurovilians to really express themselves, to live out their full life here, when they know their family is looking on from the village next door.”

And relationships? In a recent workshop on cultural differences, an educated Indian said that he'd been brought up to believe that Western women are ‘free', available. No doubt this is reinforced by what is seen on Western television, but is there anything within Auroville culture which might support such a perception? Thulasi recalls an incident. Recently her partner, Wim, passed away. “When I told a Tamil lady who knew Wim what had happened she said, very gently, ‘Don't have a friendship with another man.' She seemed to think that the trend in Auroville was for people to move on, to always find someone else, and she didn't want me to be disloyal.”

Suryagandhi confirms that there's a perception in the village that Western Aurovilians change partners frequently. “This gives Auroville a bad reputation, certainly not a spiritual one. Then there's the situation at the beach. People come from all over at weekends to look at the Western women lying on the Auroville beach. The village elders ask, ‘Why do they do this? Why can't they cover themselves up a little?'”

“When I hear this I get so angry with Tamil culture,” says Priya, “because Tamil men have no problem in going to see movies which are very suggestive and where the woman is dancing semi-naked. There's a double-standard here, and it's not fair to put the blame on Westerners.”

Bhavana remembers that one of the biggest differences between Westerners and local people in the early days concerned their different ambitions and values. “A lot of the Westerners who came here were glutted with the superficiality and materialism of the West, they wanted to go back to the land and voluntary simplicity, whereas the villagers were aspiring to get out of poverty and to experience a more materialistic lifestyle. To a certain extent, we were going in opposite directions and this caused numerous misunderstandings.”