‘War speech’ cost Gandhi his ‘Nobel’?

The following is the reproduction of an article that appeared in The Hans India, an up and coming English newspaper published from Hyderabad, on October 11, 2011. Click here to see the original: Why Gandhi was not awarded a Nobel 

There appears to be a sterner, scarcely understood side to Mahatma Gandhi’s personality. What he preached was non-violence but it was ‘non-violence of the brave’ not non-violence of the meek. It was steeped in the philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita, as was quite evident from his speech delivered at his daily prayer meeting and reported by the 'The Times', London the next day, September 27, 1947. (See the portion highlighted in blue in the last part of the article.)

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‘Why wasn’t Gandhi awarded a Nobel peace prize?’ is a question that puzzles every Indian this week as names of the current year’s winners are announced. The question is as puzzling as Barack Obama receiving it in 2009. For Obama was in office for all of two weeks by the time the ‘Awards Committee’ recognized him for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

Doesn’t it make one wonder about the objectivity of the people who decide the winners for the world’s most coveted prize(s)? Do they sometimes have feet of clay after all?

Alfred Nobel was explicit in expressing his wish that “in awarding the prizes, no consideration whatever shall be given to the nationality of the candidates, so that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be Scandinavian or not.” Nobel judges appear to have contravened this provision of his will on many occasions for political reasons or personal predilections.

The most controversial of Nobel Prizes were among those awarded for literature, peace and economics. By the by, the prize for economics was not established as per the provisions of Alfred Nobel’s will. It was established by Sveriges Riksbank (Sweden's central bank) in 1968. During the World Wars I & II and in their immediate aftermath Nobel committees adopted a policy of strict neutrality and excluded nominees from the warring nations. The third world nations also got a short shrift.

In the literature section, great writers like Marcel Proust, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, Anton Chekov, Emile Zola and André Malraux did not make the Prize. So were others like Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Vladimir Nabokov, Jorge Luis Borges, Henrik Ibsen, John Updike and August Strindberg who did not make it. Only one Indian, Rabindranath Tagore had ever been awarded the Prize for literature! On the other hand, light weight and virtually unknown writers like Gabriela Mistral and Pearl Buck were honoured.

These are not the only faux pas by the Nobel judges. They first ignored Albert Einstein’s famous theory of relativity but rewarded him for his relatively less important work in photo-electric effects to compensate for their oversight, eight years later. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis was altogether ignored.

The most controversial award of the Prize was of course in 1994, when it was awarded to Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin and Simon Peres, for working towards peace in the Middle East. ‘The prize itself became meaningless when it was awarded to Arafat. Who cares?’ posted a commentator on Timesonline in 2009, commenting on its premature award to Barack Obama.

Gandhi was indeed nominated for the world’s most prestigious prize five times between 1937 and 1948. For the record The Nobel peace committee did apologize for its oversight and did not declare a winner in 1948, the year of his assassination as reparation. Other Indians who were nominated and rejected for the prize were Jawaharlal Nehru, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Maharshi Aurobindo.

When Gandhi was nominated in 1937, his nomination was shot down by the critical comments of the committee’s advisor, Prof. Jacob Worm-Müller. Müller called into question, what he called Gandhi’s ‘sharp turns in his policies’ and vacillation between a ‘Christ and an ordinary politician’. He also referred to the criticism of several members of the international peace movement who felt that some of Gandhi’s non-violent methods led to violence and terror. The Chauri Chaura incident during the 1920-21 non-cooperation movement was cited as an example. In it, a crowd attacked a police station, set fire to it and killed several policemen. Prof. Müller also cast a doubt on the universal applicability of Gandhi’s methods of Satyagraha. He specifically mentioned that his movement in South Africa was on behalf of only Indians and not the blacks who were living in much worse living conditions.  

When his name was subsequently nominated in 1947, the partition of the country, the horrors of partition and more importantly nature of India Pakistan relations in the immediate aftermath of partition were factors that ruled him out. It is probable Norway did not want to offend Pakistan by choosing an Indian leader at a time like that.

When the committee met to consider him in October that year, a statement Gandhi reportedly made appears to have been the clincher in ruling him out.

‘The Times’ reported on September 27, 1947: “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.” ("Mahatma Gandhi, the Missing Laureate". Nobelprize.org. 7 Oct 2011 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/articles/gandhi/)

Gandhi was only reacting to a precipitous situation, more in anguish than in intention, and was not directly involved in any war. If it were the criterion for rejection, then how did Theodore Roosevelt (1906) and Henry Kissinger (1973) who were more directly involved in war efforts considered for the prize? But then Gandhi was not an American!