Utopia on Earth?: Sustainability, White Tourism, and Neocolonial Desire

Introduction

Several scholars, and even a few journalists, ¹have written about the figure of the international tourist who uses South Asia as a canvas upon which one can create and recreate the self. Perhaps the most discernable example in the pop culture imagination is Elizabeth Gilbert's trip to an ashram in India, documented in Eat Pray Love(2006), which inspired a problematic succession of travelers who followed her footsteps to communities that simply could not accommodate the traffic. International travel and tourism from the Global North to places like India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka frequently represent a form of neocolonialism wherein destinations and the people who live there are imagined not as places with a complex history inhabited by humans with their own subjectivity, but as mirrors the traveler can hold up as part of their search for a personal identity. ²This imagining is perpetuated through imagery from film and literature (like Eat Pray Love), in tourism advertisements, on social media, and in spaces like yoga studios. These texts often objectify South Asian people as they beckon the middle-class Western traveler to the subcontinent to embark on their own process of self-actualization and self-discovery. Specific to India, Rumya Putcha and Sangeeta Ballabhan explain the phenomenon in detail:

In these stories, India is consistently described as a place where those from North America or Europe can "find themselves," "surrender," "find grace in poverty," "learn tolerance," "experience culture," or "withstand an assault on the senses." ³

Whether the focus is a yoga retreat in India or a backpacking trip in Nepal, one need only look at a handful of online travel blogs to encounter these themes.

One peculiar version of Western imaginings of South Asia is found in places like Auroville, a settler colonial utopia or intentional community near Pondichery in south India. In his 2021 book, Better to Have Gone: Love, Death, and the Quest for Utopia, Akash Kapur estimated that thousands of these utopian experiments were set up in the 1960s and 1970s. ⁴Focusing on the relationships and power dynamics inside Auroville, which still exists today, Kapur presents us with many reasons to question its idealism. But as a utopian experiment, Auroville continues to be praised as a model for sustainable living. ⁵Its site is protected by UNESCO and it receives funding from the Indian government. Auroville also receives aid from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and cash donations from individual donors, and supports itself through product sales and tourism. Photographs on their website highlight the 372 acres of farmland ⁶established at Auroville over the last fifty years as well as the community's commitment to "green practices." ⁷One cannot help but wonder how much of their success in reforesting land and sustainable living is a direct result of their economic resources alone.

Colonial Residues

The enduring idea that South Asia is a space where utopia can be realized, experienced, or built has its roots in the era of European colonization of the subcontinent. In her analysis, Jessica Namakkal reminds us that Auroville was founded in the direct shadow of colonialism, twenty years after British Imperial rule ended and a mere six years after the end of French colonial rule over Pondichery. ⁸Its opening ceremony was attended by an international cast of interested people, mostly from the Global North and West. A sizeable area for viewing the ceremony was reserved for people from the surrounding villages of Tamil Nadu, but with a barrier separating them from the rest of the crowd. ⁹Not exactly a great beginning for a place that was designated a cradle for a better humanity, or, as Aurovillians put it, "the city the Earth needs." ¹⁰

For its part, Auroville addresses the issue of neocolonialism directly and succinctly in a section of its website for frequently asked questions, ¹¹ question:

Is Auroville sometimes accused of being neo-colonialist?

answer:

Very rarely; mostly by Westerners who know little about Auroville and how it functions, and equally little about the colonial era.

How might we unpack the above statement? First, the...