Sunday Scrutiny: A Century Later, Nobel Still Owes Gandhi
By Onkareshwar Pandey*
Gandhi vs the Nobel: History’s Moral Paradox
The world today appears locked in a permanent state of conflict. From the ruins of Gaza to the frozen frontlines of Ukraine, from Sudan’s humanitarian collapse to Myanmar’s civil war, the vocabulary of diplomacy has been overtaken by the grammar of force. Peace is spoken of endlessly, yet rarely practised. In this climate of exhaustion and moral confusion, an unlikely figure has returned to the centre of global reflection: a frail man who walked with a wooden staff and confronted empires without weapons — Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
In India, this renewed invocation of Gandhi has assumed both political and symbolic dimensions. Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently referred to him publicly as Rashtrapita, the Father of the Nation — a term long embedded in popular memory but seldom emphasised so directly in contemporary state rhetoric. In another moment heavy with symbolism, the ambassadors of Russia and Germany laid wreaths at Gandhi’s statue in New Delhi, representatives of nations historically shaped by war seeking meaning in the memory of a man who rejected violence as a principle.
Even fiscal policy has echoed this revival. Elements of the Union Budget have drawn on ideas linked to Gandhi’s vision of Gram Swaraj, or village-centred self-rule, presenting development not merely as economic expansion but as ethical reconstruction.
Across a world trembling under new fault lines — from Eastern Europe to the Indo-Pacific — Gandhi’s legacy has begun to function less as nostalgia and more as a mirror. A mirror reflecting how far modern politics has drifted from moral restraint: dialogue replaced by drones, restraint by retaliation, and ethical courage by realpolitik.
This convergence became especially visible this week. The Indian prime minister’s renewed invocation of Gandhi as Rashtrapita coincided with diplomatic tributes by foreign envoys in New Delhi. At the same time, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee once again published its now-familiar message of remorse, calling Gandhi “The Missing Laureate” and acknowledging what it has repeatedly described as the greatest omission in the prize’s history.
Yet in an era defined by unprecedented levels of violence, symbolic regret appears increasingly hollow. What history seems to demand now is not repetition of apology but an act of institutional reckoning — a correction not merely rhetorical but structural.
The Anatomy of a Historic Omission
Gandhi was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times: in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947, and finally in 1948. Internal assessments from the Nobel archives reveal an unease that bordered on incomprehension.
In 1937, committee adviser Professor Jacob Worm-Müller described Gandhi as “too much of a nationalist” and questioned whether his methods were fully consistent with the committee’s understanding of peace. To the advisers of that era, Gandhi appeared less a universal moral figure and more a political agitator whose struggle against British rule complicated his candidacy.
This hesitation reflected not merely a procedural concern but a deeper failure to recognise that India’s freedom movement represented a new form of politics — one in which moral force replaced military power. What Gandhi practised was not simply nationalism, but a universal method of resistance grounded in ethical confrontation.
The most consequential moment arrived in 1948. Gandhi was assassinated on January 30. Later that year, the Nobel Committee convened to decide on the Peace Prize. At the time, the Nobel rules did not explicitly prohibit a posthumous award.
Yet the committee chose not to act. Instead, its official record stated: “There was no suitable living candidate.”
As historian Øivind Stenersen later observed, this was the only instance in Nobel Peace Prize history when the award was withheld for lack of a living candidate. The phrasing revealed an evasion that history would find difficult to justify.
Reverence as Retrospective Explanation
In subsequent decades, the Committee’s explanation has gradually shifted from hesitation to reverence. Nobel officials and advisers have argued that Gandhi belonged to a category beyond prizes — likening him to figures such as the Buddha or Jesus Christ, moral teachers whose stature transcended institutional recognition.
Former Nobel Committee secretary Geir Lundestad publicly described Gandhi’s omission as the Committee’s “greatest mistake.” Yet this acknowledgement has taken on a ritualistic quality, repeated annually without any accompanying institutional response.
This framing, however, risks turning Gandhi into a purely spiritual abstraction. Gandhi was not detached from politics; he was immersed in it. He was a revolutionary who placed morality at the centre of power. To remove him from the realm of political action is to misunderstand the very nature of his achievement.
Global Recognition Beyond Oslo
While the Nobel Committee hesitated, the rest of the world did not. Gandhi’s assassination triggered an extraordinary wave of international mourning. The United Nations paid rare tribute to a man who had never held state office. More than 3,500 messages of condolence arrived from global leaders.
Albert Einstein wrote that future generations would scarcely believe that such a man had ever walked the earth.
General Douglas MacArthur called the killing “the foulest crime in modern history.” British Prime Minister Clement Attlee described Gandhi as “the greatest figure of our time.” U.S. President Harry Truman said Gandhi was “an inspiration to the lovers of freedom everywhere.”
The contrast was stark: global reverence versus institutional silence.
Ironically, the Nobel Committee later honoured those who explicitly drew their philosophy from Gandhi. Martin Luther King Jr. received the prize in 1964 for a civil rights movement rooted in Gandhian non-violence. Albert Luthuli was honored in 1960 for applying similar principles in South Africa. Nelson Mandela, awarded in 1993, acknowledged Gandhi as a moral predecessor. When the Dalai Lama received the prize in 1989, committee chair Egil Aarvik described it as a tribute to Gandhi’s memory.
The disciple was recognised. The source was not.
A Pattern of Political Caution
The Gandhi omission was not an isolated anomaly but part of a broader pattern in which political calculation has often outweighed moral radicalism.
The Peace Prize has repeatedly produced controversial outcomes:
- Henry Kissinger received it in 1973 amid the Vietnam War’s devastation.
- Aung San Suu Kyi was honoured in 1991 before her later association with the Rohingya crisis.
- Abiy Ahmed was awarded in 2019, before the outbreak of the Tigray conflict.
Nobel historian Irwin Abrams described the Gandhi case as the prize’s most painful paradox: an institution devoted to peace consistently avoided the most uncompromising advocate of non-violence.
The Case for a Millennium Peace Prize
Annual expressions of regret now appear insufficient. If the Nobel Committee wishes to transform apology into action, a gesture of equal historical weight is required.
Such an initiative could take three forms:
First, the creation of a one-time Millennium Peace Prize dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi — not as a conventional posthumous award, but as a special recognition of moral leadership that reshaped world history.
Second, the establishment of a Global Gandhi Institute for Ethical Conflict Resolution, funded through this initiative and devoted to scientific research on non-violent resistance, training mediators for active conflict zones, and developing ethical governance frameworks for divided societies.
Third, a revision of Nobel nomination criteria to explicitly include moral leadership that operates outside state power and diplomatic treaties.
Gandhi in a Fractured Century
The wars of today — Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Myanmar — share a central assumption: that violence is the final arbiter of political legitimacy. Gandhi rejected this premise entirely. His concept of satyagraha, or truth-force, proposed not submission but active moral confrontation. His idea of swaraj championed decentralisation at a time when authority is again concentrating in the hands of the few. His vision of vasudhaiva kutumbakam — the world as one family — directly challenges rising xenophobia and civilizational arrogance.
Gandhi’s relevance is therefore not symbolic but structural. He offers an alternative logic of power itself.
Beyond Regret to Redemption
The Nobel Peace Prize now stands at a moral crossroads. It can remain a diplomatic instrument that intermittently honours peacemakers while reflecting political convenience. Or it can confront its own most profound failure with imagination and courage.
A Millennium Peace Prize for Gandhi would not merely correct the historical record. It would redefine what peace leadership means in the 21st century. It would affirm that the highest form of authority lies not in commanding armies but in mastering oneself; not in winning wars but in ending the idea of war itself.
As the world stumbles from crisis to crisis, Gandhi’s light has not dimmed — it has grown more urgent. The Nobel Committee now has an opportunity not simply to atone for the past, but to illuminate the future.
The question is whether it can summon the very courage it once failed to recognise in one man, nearly a century ago.
*Onkareshwar Pandey is a political analyst who writes on democracy, global ethics, and civilizational discourse. The views are personal.
