The town of Auroville started in concept form with a charter in February 1968. Its purpose was to realise human unity. The charter depicts a society living together in harmony. There is no owner and all residents must be willing to live as servitors of the divine consciousness. It is a place of unending education, constant progress and a youth that never ages. At the inauguration in 1968, youth from 124 different nations and 23 Indian states deposited a handful of their national soil into an urn that contains the Auroville Charter, which was written in French.
The vision for Auroville was based on the teachings of Sri Aurobindo, who taught that life should follow a spiritual path with a combination of psychological discipline and yogic practices. Indeed, a century ago Sri Aurobindo declared that “all life is yoga”.
In 1973, Mr Nirmal Sethia, through the N. Sethia Foundation, funded the construction of the “Bharat Nivas” also known as The Pavilion of India in Auroville. The Bharat Nivas is the centre of activities of life in Auroville and houses the Sri Aurobindo Auditorium, the Sri Aurobindo World Centre for Human Unity, a Centre for Indian Studies and a Centre for Research in Indian Culture amongst its many features.
Today, people of all creeds, politics and nationalities live in Auroville in peace.