Amidst violence, terrorism and war, it is peace that makes news in October, when the Nobel Prize is announced. Ironically, Alfred Nobel who invented an explosive more powerful than anything known at the time ~ dynamite ~ instituted this Peace Prize. A sincere interest in the pacifist movement, and not guilt, was what motivated Sir Alfred Nobel to institute the Peace Prize. As the coveted prize attracts great public attention, it has also faced criticism occasionally. The committee members do not divulge any difference of opinion in selecting a candidate in any manner; they do not take part in any public debates which follow the announcement of the prize.

As of 2023, the Peace Prize has been awarded to as many as 111 individuals and 27 organizations. Only two recipients have won multiple Peace Prizes: the International Committee of the Red Cross has won three times and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has won twice. The US tops the list with the maximum number of 22 Peace Prizes. There have been 19 years in which the Peace Prize was not awarded. The interruptions were during the two world wars and also during more peaceful periods when the Committee could not reach a decision.

The list of Peace laureates includes statesmen like Lester Bowles Pearson, the Prime Minister of Canada, Mohammed Anwar Al-Sadat, President of Egypt, revolutionaries like Martin Luther King of USA and Nelson Mandela of South Africa, Generals such as George Catlett Marshall of USA, practical individuals of action like Adofo Perez of Argentina, Mother Teresa of India and human rights campaigners like Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar and Tigoberta Menchu Tum from Guatemala. Since World War II, the range of Laureates has been broader. The Award has been given to peace workers, organizers of humanitarian aid and international institutions, lawyers, diplomats and statesmen. Adapting to changing historical circumstances, the Committee created a new category of prize winners not necessarily connected with international activities.

In fact, many Laureates of the last few decades have been involved in different regional and national peace processes for which they received the Peace Prize. Many times, the Nobel Peace Prize has been a subject of controversy. When Carl Von Ossietzky, a young German Pacifist, imprisoned and tortured by the Nazi regime, was awarded the Peace Prize for 1935 (Hitler was so furious that he prohibited any German from receiving the Peace Prize, a highly controversial decision at that time), two members withdrew from the Committee. In the 1960s, advocates of human rights such as South African Albert John Lutili (1970) and the leader of the American non-violent Movement of Civil Rights, Martin Luth er King in 1964, came to constitute an important category of laureates. Awards to protagonists of human rights were more often than not controversial because human rights issues, as in the case of the Soviet dissident, Andrei Dmitrierich Sackharov (1975), were hot topics in the Western capitalist world. In 1973, when Henry A Kissinger from USA and Le duc Tho from North Vietnam were awarded the Peace Prize for jointly negotiating the Vietnam Peace Accord, the latter refused to accept the Prize. He was the only person to do so and Kissinger did not go in person to receive the Prize.

That year two members withdrew from the Committee. In 1994, when the Prize was awarded to Yasser Arafat from Palestine, Simone Peres, Foreign Minister of Israel and Yitzak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel, for their joint efforts to create peace in the Middle-East, one member withdrew from the Committee. The 2012 Nobel Peace Prize was given to the European Union (EU) for its six decades of contributions to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe. The choice was not welcomed by many, as the EU was dealing with several pressing economic problems including the Greek debt crisis, and because a number of countries make and sell weapons. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Northern Ireland’s Mairead Maguire and Argentina’s Adolfo Perez Esquivel signed an open letter criticising the decision and said that the EU is not one of the champions of peace Nobel had in mind.

The decision to give the Nobel Prize 2009 to Barack Obama was severely criticised on the ground that the recognition was premature. This is the Nobel Committee giving Obama the ‘You aren’t George Bush award’, Brian Bechor ,national coordinator of Act Now to Stop War and End Racism said at that time. The great French scholar Romain Rolland regarded Mahatma Gandhi as the greatest Indian after Buddha and the greatest human being after Christ, and the Father of the Nation was not chosen for the Nobel Prize for his contribution to humanity and world peace. Gandhi’s name was raised in 1924, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and 1948 for the award.

Geir Lundestad, a permanent secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, once admitted, Our record is far from perfect and not giving Gandhi was the biggest omission. The Nobel Committee had dismissed his nomination on the ground that his political actions were tactical, his calculations cunning. A posthumous award was proposed by the Norwegian jurist, Frede Castberg, but the Committee was faced with an impediment, specifically the issue of funding an appropriate successor to receive the Prize money. Thus, the most deserving person in the world was denied the great honour.

It is worth mentioning that Gandhi’s philosophy had inspired many Pacifist leaders including the likes of US Civil Rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. (1964 Peace Nobel), James Bevel, Nelson Mandela (1993 Peace Nobel), Bishop Tutu (1984) and the Dalai Lama (1989 Peace Nobel). Mention may be made of Jawaharlal Lal Nehru who received the maximum number of nominations (65 spread over seven years). The award in 1906 to President Theodore Roosevelt was highly controversial within the peace movement. For the next five years the Prizes were awarded to traditional peace activists.

But Roosevelt was not to be the only statesman to become a Nobel Laureate. Many others followed, some being quite uncontroversial such as US secretary of state, Elihu Root (1912). Since 1970, however, contemporary statesmen have again been among the Laureates. Classifying awarded prizes as more or less controversial may be difficult. However, there is no doubt that the Prize to Ossietzky was among the most controversial. But it was a sign of what was gradually to develop after the Second World War: a willingness to consider the struggle for human rights as peace work. Two years after the Ossietzky award, in the autumn of 1938, many were in favour of awarding Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, who had accepted most of Hitler’s demands and left Czechoslovakia defenseless ~ in order to preserve peace in Europe.

It also seemed clear that national political considerations were important when Cordell Hull was awarded the Prize in 1945. The Ossietzky award (1935) made Germany react strongly; the Sakharov award (1975) did not make the relationship between Norway and Soviet Union friendlier, and the award to the Dalai Lama (1989) was not criticised by the Chinese government. In spite of all the controversies, the Nobel Peace Prize, in its finest moments, has turned the attention of the world to those whose distinguished services to peace and human rights and humanitarian causes have at least tempered our cynicism with hope. The choice of only two Norwegian Laureates in more than hundred years speaks much of their earnestness of purpose. It is rather strange that Mother Teresa and Yasser Arafat, both winners of the Peace Prize, are of opposite extremes. The simple answer to such criticism is that there are different paths to peace.

(The writer, a former Associate Professor, Department of English, Gurudas College, Kolkata, is presently with RabIndra Bharati University)