Would Auroville, the “utopian” town outside Pondicherry that over the years has attracted many foreign and Indian spiritual seekers, be whe...
Would Auroville, the “utopian” town outside Pondicherry that over the years has attracted many foreign and Indian spiritual seekers, be where it was if not for French colonialism? No, argues historian Jessica Namakkal in Unsettling Utopia The Making and Unmaking of French India, and it is important to understand why.
“Auroville is not a French space per se, but that it came into existence through French colonial institutions. The reason it appears as a postcolonial and not a colonial space is because of the success France has had in depicting French India as a space of positive influence,” Namakkal writes. “In and near Pondicherry, the Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville serve as examples of how liberal discourse rooted in multiculturalism, spirituality, equality, and utopianism has displaced local Tamil populations from both land and history, time and space.”
In Unsettling Utopia, Namakkal – who is an assistant professor of the practice in international comparative studies, gender, sexuality, and feminist studies; and history at Duke University – examines the complex nature of Pondicherry (now known as Puducherry) as a “minor” colony, that was often defined in contrast to the much larger space of British India next to it, and what that has meant for its inhabitants.
I spoke to Namakkal...
