While we’re in the thick of Nobel Prize season, Sree over at SAJA reminds us that the peace prize commitee never recognized Mohandas Gandhi, its greatest omission of all time:

… Reuters reported in early 1998 that the reason for not selecting the leader of India’s struggle for independence was Norway’s friendship with Britain after World War II. Hundreds of documents in a basement safe at the Nobel Institute in Oslo… showed that Gandhi was nominated but did not win in 1937, 1947 and 1948.

Historians say the five-man jury in the 1930s and ’40s was pro-British and had a patronizing attitude to candidates from the developing world. “If I were to guess, one factor which made it difficult to give the prize to Gandhi was the very strong pro-British orientation in Norway’s foreign policy,” said Geir Lundestad, director of the Nobel Institute. [Link]

Something is rotten in the state of Norway, and it ain’t just the lutefisk. The peace prize endowed by the inventor of dynamite later covered its ass with vim and bluster:

There is no hint in the archives that the Norwegian Nobel Committee ever took into consideration the possibility of an adverse British reaction to an award to Gandhi… 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.’

… it seems clear that they seriously considered a posthumous award… they decided to reserve the prize, and then, one year later, not to spend the prize money for 1948 at all. What many thought should have been Mahatma Gandhi’s place on the list of Laureates was silently but respectfully left open. [Link]

It’s all clear now. They really did give it to Gandhi, see. In their heads. Without telling anyone. Poor Nobel committee, always on the wrong side of history. Then they gave Yasser Arafat the peace prize in 1994. Can you say ‘overcompensate’?

On a happier note:

Several people associated with South Asia have won Nobel Prizes… ‘You have seen the Raman effect on alcohol! Please do not try to see the alcohol effect on Raman’

More on Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman:

It was the first time that an Indian scholar who studied wholly in India received the Nobel Prize… CV Raman is the uncle of Nobel Prize Physics winner Dr. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. India celebrates National Science Day on the 28th February of every year. It is on this day that Dr.CV Raman discovered [the] Raman effect in 1928.

… he was offered a toast during the Nobel function. Being a strict teetotaller he responded, “Sir! You have seen the Raman effect on alcohol! Please do not try to see the alcohol effect on Raman.” [Link]