Mahatma Gandhi, the Missing Laureate

Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) has become the strongest symbol of non-violence in the 20th century. It is widely held – in retrospect – that the Indian national leader should have been the very man to be selected for the Nobel Peace Prize. He was nominated several times, but was never awarded the prize. Why?

These questions have been asked frequently: Was the horizon of the Norwegian Nobel Committee too narrow? Were the committee members unable to appreciate the struggle for freedom among non-European peoples?" Or were the Norwegian committee members perhaps afraid to make a prize award which might be detrimental to the relationship between their own country and Great Britain?

When still alive, Mohandas Gandhi had many admirers, both in India and abroad. But his martyrdom in 1948 made him an even greater symbol of peace. Twenty-one years later, he was commemorated on this double-sized United Kingdom postage stamp.Photo: Copyright © Scanpix

Gandhi was nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and, finally, a few days before he was murdered in January 1948. The omission has been publicly regretted by later members of the Nobel Committee; 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". However, the committee has never commented on the speculations as to why Gandhi was not awarded the prize, and until recently the sources which might shed some light on the matter were unavailable. Below is an abstract of that article in http://nobelprize.org/

Why Was Gandhi Never Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?

Up to 1960, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded almost exclusively to Europeans and Americans. In retrospect, the horizon of the Norwegian Nobel Committee may seem too narrow. Gandhi was very different from earlier Laureates. He was no real politician or proponent of international law, not primarily a humanitarian relief worker and not an organiser of international peace congresses. He would have belonged to a new breed of Laureates.

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. Thus it seems that the hypothesis that the Committee's omission of Gandhi was due to its members' not wanting to provoke British authorities, may be rejected.

In 1947 the conflict between India and Pakistan and Gandhi's prayer-meeting statement, which made people wonder whether he was about to abandon his consistent pacifism, seem to have been the primary reasons why he was not selected by the committee's majority. Unlike the situation today, there was no tradition for the Norwegian Nobel Committee to try to use the Peace Prize as a stimulus for peaceful settlement of regional conflicts.

During the last months of his life, Gandhi worked hard to end the violence between Hindus and Muslims which followed the partition of India. We know little about the Norwegian Nobel Committee's discussions on Gandhi's candidature in 1948 – other than the above quoted entry of November 18 in Gunnar Jahn's diary – but it seems clear that they seriously considered a posthumous award. When the committee, for formal reasons, ended up not making such an 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.

Read the Full article here http://nobelprize.org/peace/articles/gandhi/index.html

I didn't kill Gandhi

Who killed the Mahatma? History tells us that three bullets from a Beretta M1934 semi-automatic pistol silenced Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Nathuram Vinayak Godse had pulled the trigger and killed the person. But the thought, principles, ideas have all passed away – peacefully and unnoticed. In private conversations Gandhi bashing is a favourite pastime, in public functions Gandhi provides the preferred quotable quote. In the institutions founded or inspired by him, he exists - in the hanging portraits on the wall and the statues amidst the grass.

The ideological death was not caused by hot lead or senile decay - it was apathy. A well-maintained Rajghat and a national holiday on every October 2 - our duty is done. 56 years later Jhanu Barua's Prof. Uttam Chaudhary pleads "Maine Gandhi ko nahin mara (I didn't kill Gandhi)." Nor did I? How could I? Gandhi to me (and so many others) was only a synonym of two words - truth and non-violence. I didn't kill any word. Words whose meanings I cannot comprehend. Words that exist in the dictionary, but not in a vocabulary. Did Gandhi imply anything else? I as a schoolboy never knew, until Richard Attenborough told me. But that was Ben Kinsley not Gandhi. I didn't kill Ben Kinsley. Nobody took me along to meet the real Father of the Nation. I never knew he existed somewhere beyond the inscriptions of Hey Ram, images on currency notes and photos on the wall in courtroom dramas. How could I kill someone about whose being I was unsure of?

I stand acquitted of any conspiracy to kill Gandhi. Everything about him was long dead long before I was even born. Gandhi died on January 30, 1948. So did his legacy. Long live the Mahatma.

On a personal note, the minute Gandhi was Mahatma-ed, he died. The point is, we fail to realise/appreciate that he was a man who rose to that level. We gave him Godly status, and at that precise moment, we thought, "Ok, he was not just human... something more" and there we distanced ourselves from him and his ideology. And, along with that, we killed all chances of resurrecting him.

Listen to the Mahatma: Click here to download this audio clip [WAV 961KB]