A Quest for Community
Wednesday, October 01, 2003
With UNESCO's help, all of the 124 member nations of the UN and 23 Indian states were represented at Auroville's founding ceremony in 1968. The Sri Aurobindo ashram had just acquired about 15 square kilometers of barren dessert land 10 km north of Pondicherry, located in the province of Tamil Nadu on the southwestern coast of India. It was an inspiring ritual, with a grand procession of the national flags and music playing as a young boy and girl from each nation walked up a just-finished spiral pathway and placed soil from their homeland into a raised marble urn that was to become the enduring symbol of Auroville. As 5000 invited guests watched, the then Prime Minister of India, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, described Auroville as: "An exciting project for bringing about harmony among different cultures and for understanding the environmental needs of man's spiritual growth."
