Mahatma Gandhi is a name that resonates with peace, non-violence, and the struggle for justice. Yet, there’s a surprising fact that many people find perplexing. Mahatma Gandhi never received the Nobel Peace Prize, despite, receiving five nominations. This omission remains a topic of discussion and debate, sparking questions about the criteria for the prestigious award and its relevance to Gandhi’s philosophy. In this article, iLovePhD explores the complex reasons why Mahatma Gandhi did not receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
Why did Mahatma Gandhi never Won the Nobel Prize for Peace?
Over the years, these questions have been asked frequently:
- Did the Norwegian Nobel Committee have a limited perspective?
- Did the committee members fail to recognize the fight for freedom in non-European people?
- Were the Norwegian committee members concerned about potentially harming their country’s relationship with Great Britain when considering prize awards?
Gandhi’s Legacy of Non-Violence
- One of the most significant reasons Gandhi didn’t receive the Nobel Peace Prize is rooted in his commitment to non-violence.
- The Nobel Committee traditionally recognized individuals and organizations that actively promoted peace through political negotiations, disarmament, or humanitarian efforts.
- Gandhi’s approach, centered on non-violent resistance and civil disobedience, was seen as unconventional and out of line with the mainstream understanding of “peace”.
- In South Africa Gandhi worked to improve living conditions for the Indians.
- This work directed against increasingly racist legislation, made him develop a strong Indian and religious commitment, and a will to self-sacrifice.
- With a great deal of success, he introduced a method of non-violence in the Indian struggle for basic human rights.
- The method, Satyagraha – “truth force” – was highly idealistic; without rejecting the rule of law as a principle.
- Gandhi’s non-violence made people respect him regardless of their attitude towards Indian nationalism or religion.
- Even the British judges who sentenced him to imprisonment recognized Gandhi as an exceptional personality.
First nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize
- In 1937, Ole Colbjornsen, a member of the Norwegian Parliament nominated Gandhi for that year’s Nobel Peace Prize.
- He was duly selected as one of thirteen candidates on the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s shortlist.
- The committee’s adviser, Professor Jacob Worm-Muller, who wrote a report on Gandhi, was more critical.
- The adviser’s report on Gandhi was “He is, undoubtedly, a good, noble and ascetic person – a prominent man who is deservedly honored and loved by the masses of India. Sharp turns in his policies, which can hardly be satisfactorily explained by his followers. He is a freedom fighter and a dictator, an idealist and a nationalist. He is frequently a Christ, but then, suddenly, an ordinary politician.”
- Gandhi had many critics in the international peace movement.
- The Nobel Committee adviser referred to these critics in maintaining that he was not consistently pacifist and that he should have known that some of his non-violent campaigns towards the British would degenerate into violence and terror.
- Example: In 1921, a crowd in Chauri Chaura, the United Provinces, attacked a police station, killed many of the policemen, and then set fire to the police station.
- Professor Worm-Muller expressed his own doubts as to whether Gandhi’s ideals were meant to be universal or primarily Indian: “One might say that it is significant that his well-known struggle in South Africa was on behalf of the Indians only, and not of the blacks whose living conditions were even worse.”
1947 – Greatest Victory and Worst Defeat
- In 1947 the nominations of Gandhi came by telegram from India.
- The nominators were B.G. Kher, Prime Minister of Bombay, Govindh Bhallabh Panth, Premier of United Provinces, and Mavalankar, the President of the Indian Legislative Assembly.
- There were six names in the Nobel Committee’s shortlist; Mohandas Gandhi was one of them.
- Then, the Nobel Committee’s adviser, the historian Jens Arup Seip, wrote a new report which is primarily an account of Gandhi’s role in Indian political history after 1937.
- The adviser wrote, “From 1937 to 1947, led to the event which for Gandhi and his movement was at the same time the greatest victory and the worst defeat – India’s independence and India’s partition”.
- The report describes how Gandhi acted in three different, but mutually related conflicts before independence. The struggle between the Indians and the British; the question of India’s participation in the Second World War; and, finally, the conflict between Hindu and Muslim communities.
- In all these three matters, Gandhi consistently followed his own principles of non-violence.
- Seip’s report on Gandhi was not the same as the report written by Worm-Müller ten years earlier.
- However, the Nobel Peace Prize has never been awarded for that sort of struggle.
- The committee members also had to consider the following issues: Should they select Gandhi for being a symbol of non-violence, and what political effects they could expect if they awarded the Peace Prize to the most prominent Indian leader – relations between India and Pakistan were far from developing peacefully during the autumn of 1947?
1948 – Posthumous award
- Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on 30 January 1948, two days before the closing date for that year’s Nobel Peace Prize nominations.
- The Committee received six letters of nomination naming Gandhi.
- The nominators were the Quakers and Emily Greene Balch, former Laureates.
- For the third time Gandhi came on the Committee’s shortlist – this time the list only included three names.
- The committee’s adviser Seip wrote a report on Gandhi’s activities during the last five months of his life.
- He concluded that Gandhi, through his course of life, had put his profound mark on an ethical and political attitude that would prevail as a norm for a large number of people both inside and outside India: “In this respect Gandhi can only be compared to the founders of religion”.
- Nobody had ever been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize posthumously.
- But according to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation in force at that time, the Nobel Prizes could, under certain circumstances, be awarded posthumously.
- Thus it was possible to give Gandhi the prize. However, Gandhi did not belong to an organization, he left no property behind and no will; who should receive the Prize money?
- The Director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, August Schou, asked the committee advisers and the Swedish prize-awarding institutions for their opinion.
- The answers were negative; posthumous awards, they thought, should not take place unless the laureate died after the Committee’s decision had been made.
- On 18 November 1948, the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to make no award that year on the grounds that “there was no suitable living candidate”.
- Chairman Gunnar Jahn wrote in his diary: “To me it seems beyond doubt that a posthumous award would be contrary to the intentions of the testator”.
- Thus it seems reasonable to assume that Gandhi would have been invited to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, if he had been alive one more year.
Mahatma Gandhi – The Missing Laureate
- Until 1960, the Nobel Peace Prize predominantly recognized individuals from Europe and the United States.
- Looking back, it appears that the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s scope was rather limited.
- Gandhi stood out starkly from the previous Laureates; he wasn’t a conventional politician, advocate of international law, foremost a humanitarian aid worker, or an organizer of international peace conferences.
- He would have represented a unique category of Nobel Laureates.
- There is no hint 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 did due to its members’ not want to provoke British authorities, may be rejected.
- During the last months of his life, Gandhi tried really hard to stop violence between Hindus and Muslims after India’s division.
- Much information was not known about what the Norwegian Nobel Committee while considering giving Gandhi an award in 1948, except for a diary entry from November 18 by Gunnar Jahn.
- It seems like they were seriously thinking about giving him an award after his death.
- But because of some formal rules, the committee didn’t end up giving him the award.
- Instead, they decided to keep the prize money and, one year later, they decided not to use it for 1948.
- What many thought should have been Mahatma Gandhi’s place on the list of Laureates was silently but respectfully left open.
Members of the Nobel Committee nominated Gandhi in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947, and finally, a few days before his assassination in January 1948. Later members of the Nobel Committee publicly regretted the omission of awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Mahatma Gandhi. In 1989, when the Dalai Lama received the Peace Prize, the Chairman of the Nobel Committee stated that it was ‘in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi.’ However, the committee has never provided an explanation for why Gandhi was not awarded the prize, and until recently, the sources that could shed light on this matter were unavailable.
Reference:
- Mahatma Gandhi, the missing laureate. www.NobelPrize.org
