HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Alfred Nobel, a Swedish industrialist, trained chemical engineer, inventor and armaments manufacturer instated the Nobel Prize in his will to be given in five different categories – Physics, Chemistry, Medicine/Physiology, Literature and Peace. As per his wishes, the awardees are selected by a committee of five members chosen by the Norwegian Parliament.

Ever since 1901, the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded every year, with a few exceptions, to deserving candidates who in the preceding year “shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

NO NOBEL FOR BAPU

In spite of having been nominated five times between 1937 to 1948, Gandhiji was never conferred with the Peace Prize.In 2006, the Secretary of Norwegian Nobel Committee Geir Lundestad acknowledged the error by stating that “The greatest omission in our 106 year history is undoubtedly that Mahatma Gandhi never received the Nobel Peace prize. Gandhi could do without the Nobel Peace prize, whether Nobel committee can do without Gandhi is the question”. After his death in 1948, the then

Nobel Committee did try to make amends by giving no award that year with the reason that “there was no suitable living candidate”.

The only Indian to have received it before Kailash Satyathi(2014) was Mother Teresa(1979) for her grassroot level work with the slum dwellers of India and establishing the Missionaries of Charity.