Date:03/10/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/10/03/stories/2007100362211700.htm

National

Nobel Prize panel regrets not honouring Gandhiji

NEW DELHI: As the country marks the 138th birth anniversary of the Father of the Nation, the Nobel Foundation has regretted not giving the Peace Prize to Mahatma Gandhi.

The “Apostle of Peace” was nominated five times for the Prize but the Norwegian Nobel committee believed that he could not be given the honour as he was “neither a real politician nor a humanitarian relief worker.”

A mistake

However, Executive Director of the Nobel Foundation in Sweden Michael Sohlam said the decision not to extend him the prize was a mistake.

“We missed a great laureate and that’s Gandhi. It is a big regret,” he told CNN-IBN.

“I usually don’t comment on what the Nobel Committees or prize awarding institutions decide. But here, they themselves think he is the one missing,” he said.

Gandhiji was nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and finally a few days before he was shot dead in January 1948.

In 1948, the Nobel Committee declined to award the Prize on that ground that “there was no suitable living candidate that year.” — PTI