Never a Nobel man

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While we’re in the thick of Nobel Prize season, Sree over at SAJA reminds us that the peace prize commitee never recognized Mohandas Gandhi, its greatest omission of all time:

… Reuters reported in early 1998 that the reason for not selecting the leader of India’s struggle for independence was Norway’s friendship with Britain after World War II. Hundreds of documents in a basement safe at the Nobel Institute in Oslo… showed that Gandhi was nominated but did not win in 1937, 1947 and 1948.

Historians say the five-man jury in the 1930s and ’40s was pro-British and had a patronizing attitude to candidates from the developing world. “If I were to guess, one factor which made it difficult to give the prize to Gandhi was the very strong pro-British orientation in Norway’s foreign policy,” said Geir Lundestad, director of the Nobel Institute. [Link]

Something is rotten in the state of Norway, and it ain’t just the lutefisk. The peace prize endowed by the inventor of dynamite later covered its ass with vim and bluster:

There is no hint in the archives that the Norwegian Nobel Committee ever took into consideration the possibility of an adverse British reaction to an award to Gandhi… when the Dalai Lama was awarded the Peace Prize in 1989, the chairman of the committee said that this was ‘in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi.’

… it seems clear that they seriously considered a posthumous award… they decided to reserve the prize, and then, one year later, not to spend the prize money for 1948 at all. What many thought should have been Mahatma Gandhi’s place on the list of Laureates was silently but respectfully left open. [Link]

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p>It’s all clear now. They really did give it to Gandhi, see. In their heads. Without telling anyone. Poor Nobel committee, always on the wrong side of history. Then they gave Yasser Arafat the peace prize in 1994. Can you say ‘overcompensate’?

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p>On a happier note:

Several people associated with South Asia have won Nobel Prizes… ‘You have seen the Raman effect on alcohol! Please do not try to see the alcohol effect on Raman’

More on Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman:

It was the first time that an Indian scholar who studied wholly in India received the Nobel Prize… CV Raman is the uncle of Nobel Prize Physics winner Dr. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. India celebrates National Science Day on the 28th February of every year. It is on this day that Dr.CV Raman discovered [the] Raman effect in 1928.

… he was offered a toast during the Nobel function. Being a strict teetotaller he responded, “Sir! You have seen the Raman effect on alcohol! Please do not try to see the alcohol effect on Raman.” [Link]

19 thoughts on “Never a Nobel man”

  1. Gandhi had many critics (especially the Communists) who claimed that his ‘non-violence’ movements many times resulted in violence and terror.

    The Labour politician Martin Tranmæl was very reluctant to award the Prize to Gandhi in the midst of the Indian-Pakistani conflict, and former Foreign Minister Birger Braadland agreed with Tranmæl. Gandhi was, they thought, too strongly committed to one of the belligerents. In addition both Tranmæl and Jahn had learnt that, one month earlier, at a prayer-meeting, Gandhi had made a statement which indicated that he had given up his consistent rejection of war. Based on a telegram from Reuters, The Times, on September 27, 1947, under the headline “Mr. Gandhi on ‘war’ with Pakistan” reported: “Mr. Gandhi told his prayer meeting to-night that, though he had always opposed all warfare, if there was no other way of securing justice from Pakistan and if Pakistan persistently refused to see its proved error and continued to minimise it, the Indian Union Government would have to go to war against it. No one wanted war, but he could never advise anyone to put up with injustice. If all Hindus were annihilated for a just cause he would not mind. If there was war, the Hindus in Pakistan could not be fifth columnists. If their loyalty lay not with Pakistan they should leave it. Similarly Muslims whose loyalty was with Pakistan should not stay in the Indian Union.”… Both Jahn and Tranmæl knew that the first report had not been complete, but they had become very doubtful. Jahn in his diary quoted himself as saying: “While it is true that he (Gandhi) is the greatest personality among the nominees – plenty of good things could be said about him – we should remember that he is not only an apostle for peace; he is first and foremost a patriot. (…) Moreover, we have to bear in mind that Gandhi is not naive. He is an excellent jurist and a lawyer.” It seems that the Committee Chairman suspected Gandhi’s statement one month earlier to be a deliberate step to deter Pakistani aggression. Three of five members thus being against awarding the 1947 Prize to Gandhi, the Committee unanimously decided to award it to the Quakers.[Link]

    In his earlier nominations (1937, 1938, 1939, 1947), he was rejected because of his support to WW2 by sending Indian troops to fight for British (36,000 Indians died fighting Germans!).

    All this does not, however, undermine his struggle for peacefull and non-violent nationalism. The noble committee justfies by saying that there were no records of “bias” towards Gandhi. Who keeps a record of that? It may have been done subconsiously.

  2. You think the Communists are bad? Wait till you hear wait till a Sikh nutter coming on here and telling you why Gandhi was the devil incarnate for not caring of the Sikhs during partition.

    Before anyone jumps on me, I am of a sikh background.

  3. the Nobel Prize commitee never recognized Mohandas Gandhi

    But they gave it to that A-hole Kissinger the “peace” prize. What a joke this thing is !!

  4. The Nobel peace prize is a joke: Kissinger and Arafat have been noted above, and let’s not forget Begin. The logic seems to be: if you’re a warmonger who decides to end hostilities, you are eligible, but not if you were never a warmonger to begin with.

  5. Wait till you hear wait till a Sikh nutter coming on here and telling you why Gandhi was the devil incarnate for not caring of the Sikhs during partition.

    Crazy… I see you’re also a big fan of “Ghandi”, the movie

  10. I guess it is the greatest blemish on the Nobel Committee that they missed out on Mahatma Gandhi.

    Maybe in 2008 on the 60th Anniversary of Gandhi’s death, they will change their laws for the very first time and award it to him posthumously.

    As for awarding it to Arafat, I don’t think it was a wrong move.

    In 1994 he along with Rabin (i think ) made a lot of progress on a situation that had been boiling over for 40 years.

    Yes I know there will be lots of you who want to bash Arafat, but one man’s meat is another man’s poison.

    A martyr and a leader to some may be a terrorist to others.

    Ask the muslim world and surely they will say that the US is ruled by a terrorist dictator who wants to come halfway around the world and bomb their country.

    At least the Mahatma abhored such stuff !

  11. The issue here is that the nobel did not get gandhi rather than the other way round. Obviously it’s nobel’s loss that it lost an opportunity to be associated with the greatest human being of the millenium.

  12. As for awarding it to Arafat, I don’t think it was a wrong move

    Definitely a wrong move!! Arafat didn’t accomplish much for the palestinian people. He, in a way, impeded progress on many occassions. He was the poster boy for the palestinian struggle, when they didn’t have anything else for them. He was more concerned about himself and his position as a leader of the palestinians, than about what he got done for the people. He gave the palestinians false hope, about things that he knew he wouldn’t be able to accomplish. I’m not taking sides here. But Arafat and the nobel peace prize? i have to disagree with you. He definitely did not deserve it in my opinion

  13. Wait till you hear wait till a Sikh nutter coming on here and telling you why Gandhi was the devil incarnate

    Or a Bengali.

  14. I will second rl on that. Whats the first thing that comes to mind when one has to reflect on peace?

  16. The way I look at this is Gandhi is much above Nobel prize.

    I think Nobel peace prize is not the greatest standard to be measured. look at the past winners.

    IAEA for its in-effectiveness in stopping nuclear proliferation. Arafat and Rabin(recognised as terrorists in some countries) Kissinger etc. And now add Gandhi to that list looks weird.

  17. Ah. El Baradei joins Rigoberta Menchu, Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Yasser Arafat and Le Duc Tho for this illustious award.

    I hadn’t realized Gandhi, Reverend King’s acknowledged inspiration (which I learned when my wife and I visited his memorial center in Atlanta last year), was not given the award. I’m glad to be lurking and learning here.

    At this point that insult to Gandhi is at least helping to keep his name from being associated with a craven group of murderers and enablers of murder.

    The Nobel peace and literature prizes are dishonored institutions at this point. by the time V. S. Naipaul was given his (twenty years late), they needed him more than otherwise.

  18. It is good that Gandhi was not awarded the Peace Prize. Even tolstoy didnt get it. They both are much above such prizes…