150th Birth Anniversary Year of Sri Aurobindo: ‘Govt committed to helping in Auroville Expansion Plan’

Context

The government is committed to expanding Auroville into a ‘city’ in line with the existing Master Plan, amidst reaffirmed support to the experimental township.

About

About Auroville:

It was founded in 1968 by Mirra Alfassa, known as ‘The Mother’.
Auroville currently has a population of 3200 people, with the Auroville Foundation owning 3,300 acres of land. A plan, known as the Galaxy Plan, envisages a city of 50,000 residents.
Created on the lines of the Galaxy Plan, the Auroville Universal Township Master Plan (perspective 2025) was approved by the HRD Ministry in 2001.
According to the Master Plan, the ‘Galaxy’ is planned to be 20 square kilometres in size, of which 5 sq km are to be the city and 15 sq km are to be the ‘green belt’.
The city is planned to have four zones: residential, cultural, industrial and international.
Apart from this, there will be the ‘Crown’, which the Master Plan defines as “a special use zone, which traverses all the four zones in a concentric fashion with a width of 75 meters, consisting of a circular road with buildings facing it.”
This Crown area will provide most of the service facilities required to support the activities in the four zones.

About Sri Aurobindo:

Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta in
After studying in London, he returned to India in 1893 and worked for the Princely State of Baroda in the service of the Maharaja and as a professor in Baroda College.
During this period he also joined a revolutionary society and took a leading role in secret preparations for an uprising against the British Government in India.
In 1906, soon after the Partition of Bengal, Sri Aurobindo quit his post in Baroda and went to Calcutta, and became one of the leaders of the Nationalist movement.
He was the first political leader in India to openly put forward, in his newspaper Bande Mataram, the idea of complete independence for the country.
He was prosecuted twice for sedition and once for conspiracy, he was released each time for lack of evidence.
In 1910 he withdrew from politics and went to Pondicherry in order to devote himself entirely to his inner spiritual life and work.
During his forty years in Pondicherry he evolved a new method of spiritual practice, which he called the Integral Yoga.
Its aim is a spiritual realisation that not only liberates man's consciousness but also transforms his nature.
In 1926, with the help of his spiritual collaborator, the Mother, he founded the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.
Among his many writings are The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga and Savitri.