In an exclusive interview to TOI, the director of the Nobel Institute who sifts through the original nominations to shortlist the final list of Nobel peace prize probables every year said that well over a dozen Indians were nominated for the coveted prize this year.
READ ALSO: Who is Kailash Satyarthi?
However on Friday, the institute announced that India's Satyarthi and Pakistan's Malala Yousafzai were awarded the Nobel peace prize 2014 jointly for "showing great personal courage and in their struggle against the suppression of children and for the right of all children to education".
Child labour activist Satyarthi became India's 8th Nobel laureate.
Geir Lundestad, director of the Nobel Institute told TOI in an exclusive interview that decision to award Satyarthi was also a way to make amends for the institute's biggest omission till date — to give the peace prize to Mahatma Gandhi.
The committee said on Friday that 60-year-old Satyarthi "maintained Mahatma Gandhi's tradition and headed various forms of protests and demonstrations, all peaceful, focusing on the grave exploitation of children for financial gain".
Lundestad added "We can't really make amends as it will forever remain our biggest omission not having given the peace prize to Gandhi. But we did come very close to giving it posthumously to Gandhi in 1948. We are however happy that we have been able to give the Nobel prize to people like Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi and now Satyarthi for following the Gandhian principle of non-violence. All these laureates have shown strong influence from Gandhi's philosophy which made it an additional quality. It is therefore an attempt to rectify our mistake around Gandhi by giving the prize to those who actively use his doctrine in modern times". "We have been following Kailash Satyarthi's work for years now. He has been nominated several times in the past decade. We finally thought this year that it was time we recognised his work, considering the number of children involved in child labour had come down drastically due to Satyarthi's movement over the past two decades".
Lundestad revealed that many as 278 candidates have been nominated for the Nobel peace prize this year — the highest number of candidates ever in the history of the most coveted prize.
He admitted that the number of Indians being nominated for the Nobel peace prize has been jumping every year from India.
"This year a healthy number of Indians figured in that list, 47 of them being global organizations," Lundestad said.
So was the choice of Satyarthi and Malala unanimous?
"It was a very difficult process considering we had a record number of nominations. We did take our time but then reached a consensus around these two candidates. Coincidentally we saw a connection between these two laureates and felt at ease — one was a Hindu, the other a Muslim, one as young as Malala, the other 60 years old. Both of them belonged to the neighbouring countries of India and Pakistan".
"We know that Nobel prize isn't a magic wand that will set things right between India and Pakistan immediately. But if the two countries end up on a peaceful path due to the prize, it would be a wonderful additional effect. One thing is for sure — that the prize will help bring about further reduction in child labour and modern day slavery".
Lundestad also told TOI "the interest in the Nobel peace prize has been increasingly tremendously. In 1976, there were only 48 nominations. In 2012, there were 231". Nearly 30 years ago, Satyarthi — a young engineer gave up a lucrative career and dedicated himself to the future of millions of children who are exploited and abused in a form of modern-day slavery. Barely six years old and on his first day in school, Satyarthi noticed a boy about his age on the steps outside the school with his father, cleaning and repairing shoes and not entering the classroom like everyone else. He saw it every day in the town of Vidisha. One day Satyarthi asked the cobbler why it was so. The cobbler replied: "My father was a cobbler and my grandfather before him. We were born to work, and so was my son."
By the time he was 11, Satyarthi had begun urging other boys and girls to collect used textbooks and money to give to families who could not afford tuition for their children. It was the beginning of a life of activism.
In 1980 he started a journal called The Struggle Shall Continue and ever since has worked relentlessly to free bonded children, to rehabilitate them with vocational training and education and marshal the force of public opinion against child labor.
So far his organization Bachpan Bachao Andolan has freed over 80,000 children from various forms of servitude and helped in successful re-integration, rehabilitation and education.
Gandhi was nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and, finally, a few days before he was murdered in January 1948. The omission has been publicly regretted by later members of the Nobel committee; when the Dalai Lama was awarded the peace prize in 1989, the chairman of the committee said that this was "in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi".
Gandhi was assassinated on January 30, 1948, two days before the closing date for that year's Nobel peace prize nominations. The committee received six letters of nomination naming Gandhi. 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 organisation, he left no property behind and no will; who should receive the prize money? The director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute then decided posthumous awards should not take place unless the laureate died after the committee's decision had been made.
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