Today, Friday October 10, 2008 will be a great day in the dynamic history of Auroville. This day marks its 40th anniversary. Appropriately, the UNESCO is celebrating this at a function in Paris. UNESCO had been supporting Auroville and the similarities between UNESCO's ideals, values and principles and those underpinning this unusual community cannot be over-emphasised. They share several priorities including dialogue among civilizations, cultures and religions; cultural diversity and culture as a factor for development; poverty eradication; quality education and lifelong learning; and renewable energies.
The main objective of Auroville is to work for 'the advent of a progressive universal harmony'. The Auroville community cannot be congratulated enough on the achievements of these 40 years.
Today's celebrations in Paris will comprise a roundtable conference on the theme - Auroville: an emerging society-future perspectives. A musical event - A Sense of Infinite - which is a fusion of contemporary Indian music and western by Auroville's group NADAKA will be part of the celebrations.
In fact, the General Assembly of UNESCO had passed resolutions on Auroville in 1966, 1968, 1970 and 1983. In its fourth resolution in 1983, UNESCO said it recognised that "Auroville seeks to ensure international understanding, peace, innovative education, a learning society and all around material and spiritual development for harmonious individual and collective growth".
The UNESCO-sponsored projects in Auroville included recovering the voice of women in the villages and in Auroville in 1998, local Tamil culture heritage and language in 1999, support to environmental educational training centre in 2005 and Auroville Tsunami Rehabilitation Programme in 2006. As the Charter of Auroville says, it belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. Auroville wants to be the bridge between the past and the future. Taking advantage of all discoveries from without and from within, Auroville will boldly spring towards future realizations. Auroville will be a site of material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual Human Unity. Last, not the least, Auroville will be the place of an unending education, of constant progress, and a youth that never ages.