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Journalism of Courage
On Monday (January 30), the 75th anniversary of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, the Norwegian Nobel Committee asked itself a question that recurs periodically: why did the greatest apostle of peace in the modern world — indeed the man after whom the Peace Nobel could arguably be named — was never honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize?
Indeed, Gandhi was nominated several times for the honour that over the following decades went to innumerable, far less deserving recipients — but he was never ultimately chosen. Why did the Nobel Committee, which is ceaselessly eloquent in its defence of freedom and peace everywhere, never get around to honouring perhaps the most inspiring symbol of non-violent struggle against oppression and discrimination the world has seen?
To be fair, this is a question that the Nobel Committee pondered at length.
The Nobel website asks: “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 which might be detrimental to the relationship between their own country and Great Britain?”
Under the section ‘Mahatma Gandhi, the missing laureate’, the Nobel website says: “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.”
The Mahatma was nominated in 1937, 1938, and 1939 by Ole Colbjørnsen, a Labour member of Norway’s parliament.
The motivation for the first nomination was written by women in the Norwegian branch of Friends of India, a network of associations in Europe and the US. But the Nobel Committee’s adviser, Jacob Worm-Müller, found the layers in Gandhi’s personality a disqualification. He argued that Gandhi, although “a good, noble and ascetic person”, was given to “sharp turns in his policies”, which made him both “a freedom fighter and a dictator, an idealist and a nationalist”.
Worm-Müller also cast doubt on Gandhi’s struggles in South Africa. He said critics had alleged that Gandhi was not consistently pacifist, and doubted if his ideals were universal — his “struggle in South Africa was on behalf of the Indians only, and not of the blacks…”
Indeed, in 1947, the Mahatma was nominated by B G Kher, G V Mavalankar, and G B Pant. Pandit Pant described him as the “the greatest living exponent of the moral order and the most effective champion of world peace today”.
This time, the Committee’s adviser, Jens Arup Seip, gave a “rather favourable, yet not explicitly supportive” report. Committee Chairman Gunnar Jahn recorded that two members, Christian conservative Herman Smitt Ingebretsen, and Christian liberal Christian Oftedal, favoured Gandhi, but three others — including Labour politician Martin Tranmæl and former Foreign Minister Birger Braadland — did not want to honour Gandhi in the middle of Partition and riots.
The Nobel for that year was given to The Quakers.
According to information on the Nobel site, there was a technical issue.
Gandhi was assassinated two days before the 1948 Peace nominations closed. There were six nominations on his behalf, including from the 1947 and 1946 Laureates, The Quakers and Emily Greene Balch. Seip wrote that given the numbers of people on whose attitudes Gandhi had left his mark, he “can only be compared to the founders of religions”.
But the problem was this: While the Nobel Foundation’s statutes did allow a posthumous award under certain circumstances, Gandhi did not belong to an organisation, and he had not left a will, so it was unclear who would receive the prize money.
The Committee’s lawyer, Ole Torleif Røed, did seek the opinion of prize-awarding institutions — and was advised against a posthumous award. Eventually, the Committee said “there was no suitable living candidate” that year.
Going by the information recorded by the Nobel Committee itself, this is what happened:
Up to 1960, the Peace Nobel went almost exclusively to Europeans and Americans. (In 1960, the black South African anti-apartheid activist Albert John Lutuli was honoured with the Prize.) Gandhi was a “different” man — not a real politician or proponent of international law, not a humanitarian relief worker, not an organiser of global peace congresses.
Was the Committee influenced by an apprehension of a possible adverse reaction by Britain to an award to Gandhi? No — the Committee’s archives do not suggest that this was ever taken into account.
