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'Gandhi was short-listed for the Nobel Prize five times'
DOES the Nobel Prize matter any more? That was the question put to Ole Danbolt Mjos. The chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee lost little time in coming forth with a response. Yes. it does matter, said he. Not because the Nobel, or the Nobel Peace Prize in particular, necessarily leads to peace among nations, but because it gives a spur to the need for peace. The bottomline was obvious: the Nobel has a sobering effect on people.
And do not forget, he appeared to be reminding everyone, that the old prestige that came with the Nobel is yet there. It has had a decent record, to a point where individuals and organisations envisaging new peace-related award programs of their own often travel to Norway in order to under-
stand the framework that underscores such programs.
But Mjos does agree that controversy about the Nobel exists. There have been questions about the prize going to what many see as the wrong kind of people. All said and done, though, the Nobel Peace Prize has kept its image rather intact, specifically because it happens to be a legacy of Alfred Nobel and his family. You get the drift of the conversation: because a family is involved, there is little or no chance that the prize will ever come under a cloud or be subjected to arbitrary treatment.
Mjos makes it a point to recall the reason why Alfred Nobel left the peace prize to be handled by Norway rather than Sweden. The founder of the prize, says Mjos, profoundly respected the Norwegian parliament because of
its image as a people's body. And the Swedish legislature? For Nobel, there was that unmistakable sense of elitism about it. Besides, Nobel respected the right of Norway to be free of Sweden, respected its struggle for independence. In so many words, therefore, letting Norway handle the peace prize was an acknowledgement of its basic decency and
its democratic political foundations.
That is all very well. But then you steer the conversation back to that small matter of controversy. Why was Mahatma Gandhi, the man from whom Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela learnt a thing or two about nonviolence, never deemed qualified to be a Nobel laureate? Mjos' response is as revealing as it is spontaneous. Gandhi, he tells you in measured tone, was short-listed for the Nobel Peace Prize five times. For the first four, majority opinion made sure he did not come by the prize. But then, at the end of 1947, the Nobel Committee finally reached a unanimous decision that, come 1948, the Indian nationalist leader would be the recipient of the prize.
As events were to turn out, though, it was too late. Gandhi was assassinated in January 1948. But could he not have been honoured posthumously, in the way Dag Hammarskjoeld was in 1961 when he was killed in a plane crash while
on a peace mission to Congo? Professor Mjos does not have an unequivocal response to that, save only to wonder why such a move could not be taken at the time. But he adds that the posthumous honour for Hammarskjoeld was a one-time affair and is not likely to be repeated. He then goes on to heap deserved praise on the late United Nations secretary general. Hammarskjoeld, he notes, was a man of absolute integrity and enjoyed a unique position.
But controversy, he notes, will always be there. In 1936, the Nobel for a German caused fury in Hitler; and in 1975, Andrei Sakharov's coming by the prize pushed the Soviet leadership into apoplectic mode. And then you remember that much similar a reaction came from Nikita Khrushchev when in 1960 Boris Pasternak won the Nobel for Literature. In the end, Pasternak declined to accept the award and died heart-broken not much later.
Mjos accepts the terrible reality of the state sometimes coming down
hard on the individual whom the Nobel Committee honours. He cites the case of Aung San Suu Kyi, who has not travelled to Oslo to receive the prize an'd so has never delivered an acceptance speech. Perhaps the junta in Myanmar would have permitted her to leave the country and go to Norway? Perhaps. Mjos nods, but unless she was to have a guarantee that she would be allowed back into the country after receiving the Nobel, Suu Kyi would not leave her homeland.
The question of moral character comes in here, the same that once demonstrated resolve in the French intellectual Jean-Paul Sartre. The Frenchman, learning in 1964 that he had been awarded the Nobel for Literature, with alacrity declared his inability to accept it. Does such rejection disturb the Nobel Committee? In 1973, Vietnam's Le DucTho, sharing the prize with Henry Kissinger, refused to take it because, in his view, peace had not come to Vietnam. Mjos is not perturbed at the question.
His belief remains that those who sit in judgment over the award simply do their job. Yes, there will always be criticism and controversy. Beyond all that, though, there is, he reiterates, the prestige associated with the Nobel Prize The Nobel Committee -- and he is unambiguous about it - has only one mission: to honour individuals it thinks are deserving of such honour.
Ole Mjos speaks movingly of the issues the world is confronted with these days. His appreciation for Muhammad Yunus is without ambivalence. The Bengali winner of the Nobel Prize, says Mjos, has drawn attention to poverty and its reduction through his Grameen efforts. Obviously, the Nobel has expanded the canvas on which he has worked, has given him a bigger platform as it were. And Yunus can build on the environment theme, which has brought Al Gore his own Nobel for peace. Poverty and the environment, he says, with good emphasis, are the issues that matter. It is clear they matter
hugely to the Nobel Committee. Why else would Kenya's Wangari Mathai be honoured with the Nobel?
Professor Mjos moves from the Nobel to his impressions of Bangladesh. Clearly enthused by al) he has seen on his brief trip, he knows - and he makes it a point to let you know -- that alliances need to be built in Bangladesh if saying farewell to poverty is the goal.
He is frank enough to admit that before seeing the country firsthand, his impressions of it were similar to those of many others abroad: it was a land infested with poverty and demeaned by famine, floods, and assorted other disasters.
The visit has, however, clearly changed his perceptions. "I see the resources that you have, the hard-working people, the human resources you can build on," he says cheerfully. He finishes by expressing approval of the younger generation he has interacted with, whose sights are set on "education, education, education."