Nobel must prize individual achievement over symbolism

Had it not been the aspect of hyphenating India and Pakistan in this year’s award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the young Pakistani Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi from India, there would have been no argument for the value placed on the causes the recipients represent.

 But for the Nobel, we might not consider the brave fight of the Pashtun girl of the Swat Valley who survived the Taliban bullets on October 9, 2012 for daring to earn her education as expedient. Malala is indeed a symbol of courage standing up for the right of women in the subcontinent surcharged with religious bigotry. 

Satyarthi sensitised us to the wholesale child labour in India at great personal risk to his life. The recognition that their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education is a prerequisite for peaceful global development must be welcomed without reservation.

The rather ‘secular’ selection this year should occasion both a moment of cheer and shame for both India and Pakistan. Cheer because both the nations have such extraordinary human beings to serve such broad-based altruistic purposes. And shame because both the nations continue to violate the rights of children and young people which comes in the way of an enduring global peace. What is ironical in the case of Satyarthi is that our government failed to recognise and honour him. We failed to see the filmmaking genius of Satyajit Ray before the west took note of his Pather Panchali, arguably one of his best creations.

The obvious benefits of a Nobel recognition is that it opens the previously closed doors. The Peace Prize to Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991 helped move Myanmar higher on the international agenda. The United Nations adopted a resolution condemning Myanmar’s military regime while several countries, the US, major EU countries, even Japan, began placing greater emphasis on human rights in their policies towards Myanmar. 

The Peace Prize in 1996 to Bishop Carlos Belo and José Ramos-Horta for their struggle for East Timor's right of self-determination led to closer involvement in the conflict on the part of the United Nations, and to the modification by the United States and several EU countries of their support for the Indonesian authorities, especially behind the scenes.

But at times, the Nobel Committee gave the impression that either there has been a dumbing down of the Nobel-worthy pacifists lately or the Prize itself has dumbed down. For instance, it bears recall that the overawed Nobel committee awarded the Peace Prize to President Barack Obama in 2009 for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation”, who was barely into the ninth month of his dabbling with international diplomacy. His pacifist invocation to a language of reconciliation and inclusiveness was hardly enough to place him at par with the likes of, say, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Mother Teresa. 

The Nobel for Obama was interpreted as Europe’s revenge on George W Bush much in the same way as the Peace Prize to the International Atomic Energy Agency and its chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, in 2005 was deemed as a “slap” at Bush, who had pressed for ElBaradei's removal just months before he received the prize. Earlier too, there has been proof of the penchant of the Nobel Committee for political correctness when they declared, among others – Theodore Roosevelt, a “naked imperialist”, a self-avowed terrorist such as Menachem Begin, and Henry Kissinger, the “architect” of the secret bombing of Cambodia, a war-monger and war criminal – as peaceniks.

Jimmy Carter, the peace prize winner for 2002 got the prize apparently as a late recognition for his role in the “liberation” of central Europe, the collapse of the Soviet empire and finally for the end of the Cold War. Even Mikhail Gorbachev, many regard, got a Nobel peace prize in return for his role in the dissolution of the erstwhile Soviet Union. Alongside the Laureates who should not have won the Peace Prize, the hubris of the Oslo Committee had been notable exclusions like Mahatma Gandhi – the 20th century's leading advocate of non-violence – and Jean Monnet - “father” of European integration. 

LoC firing

As this year’s nomination came at the backdrop of heavy mortar shelling and gunfire on the Line of Control, one suspects that Oslo was influenced by the immediate – feeding fat on the western stereotypes about the subcontinent. What was worse, almost as a subtle manoeuvre, it placed India and Pakistan in the same bracket, to disengage from which hyphenation India had been assiduously working for quite some time. 

This year’s citation notes that “in conflict-ridden areas in particular, the violation of children leads to the continuation of violence from generation to generation.”  Now, with Iraq and Afghanistan still bleeding, Arab-Israeli conflict still raging, new conflict zones in Africa always emerging, it is interesting to locate the Noble Committee’s area of emphasis. The rub is, if the purpose of the Nobel Peace Prize had been to establish peace all over the world, it would clearly have failed. 

In 1994, for the first time in the history of the Nobel Peace Prize, the award was shared by three winners – Yasir Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin who were honoured by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee for their cooperation in trying to bring lasting peace to the Middle East. The peace was elusive.

The Nobel Committee must learn to prize individual achievement over symbolism. Perhaps by clubbing together the laudable roles of Malala and Satyarthi, it sought to counterbalance the ruffled sentiment that besets India and Pakistan perpetually. But it must not arrogate to itself the onerous and unrealisable task of establishing peace.