Dr N. Janardhan :
More than a decade ago, Swedish member of parliament Lars Gustafsson made headlines for nominating the game of ‘football’ for the Nobel Peace Prize. Analysing his suggestion, sports anthropologist author Simon Kuper pointed out that “football stood a good chance of winning, because merit is not the only consideration when Nobel prizes are doled out”.
Explaining his argument, Kuper asked: “Have you ever wondered why the Nobel Prize for literature is always won by unknown poets… rather than by truly great writers…? The answer is lobbying. The average literary cocktail party in Gothenburg is packed with authors scouring the room for elderly Swedes who might be in a position to give them the Nobel Prize.” He concluded on a light note: “It so happens that I am lobbying for a Nobel Prize myself.”
As another round of Nobel Prize presentations took place in Sweden a few days ago – an annual tradition since 1901 – it is worth highlighting how the prize in general, and the Peace Prize in particular, is awash with irony.
First, Alfred Bernhard Nobel was a Swede, but decided that Norwegians should determine who had “done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”
Second, Nobel had to his credit the deadly “dynamite” among his 355 patented inventions and, yet, he was a man concerned about peace!
Third, the timeframe for judging the work of those nominated and for awarding the Peace Prize is increasingly getting shorter. The most ridiculously short period was that of US President Barack Obama in 2009 – hardly a year after assuming office – for promoting nuclear non-proliferation and a “new climate” in international relations, especially in reaching out to the Muslim world. Compare this with the Nobel for economics, sciences and literature, which is awarded for work done over decades, apart from the work being certainly more enduring.
Fourth, and more importantly, the prize has evolved from being given to pacifists to even warmongers (architect of the 1972 Christmas bombing campaign in Vietnam and American diplomat Henry Kissinger, who was a joint winner in 1974; in fact, his co-recipient, North Vietnamese leader Le Duc Tho, rejected the award) to other peace genres like environment protection and climate change awareness (Wangari Maathai of Kenya in 2004 and US vice-president Al Gore and the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007) to human and child welfare, as is the case with the choice of the 2014 joint awardees – child rights activists Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai.
Nothing wrong with the way the award has evolved, barring a few unworthy choices. Nothing wrong in recognising Satyarthi and Malala’s “struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education”.
The problem lies in the attribute that followed: (for being) “a Hindu and a Muslim, an Indian and a Pakistani to join in a common struggle for education and against extremism.” This controversially paints the prize with a religious and political brush. Not only did the announcement of the winners coincide with India and Pakistan being engaged in yet another of their now very frequent cross-border firing; but it was followed up with the co-winners’ call for their respective political leaderships to attend the prize ceremony as a peace-promoting gesture falling on deaf ears.
This attempt to extend the profile of the prize from recognition of performance on the ground to expectation of positive results in the future in the public domain is far-fetched and unwarranted, especially when there are failed parallels from 1978 and 1994, both involving the Middle East peace process.
On both occasions, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Muslim-Jewish and Arab-Israeli combines – Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin in 1978 for their contributions to the successful closure to the Camp David Accords; and Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin in 1994 “for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East” by concluding the Oslo Accords.
The events on the ground between then and now have promoted more hate and war than the intended cooperation and peace, thus making both accords inconsequential and the prize for their architects irrelevant.
In such a milieu, it is worth pondering over Gustafsson’s ‘futuristic’ recommendation of ‘Nobel for football’. After all, if people – peacemakers, warmongers and social activists – and institutions (Médecins sans Frontières in 1999, the United Nations in 2000 and the European Union in 2012) can win the Nobel Peace Prize, then surely the game of football is a worthy contender too.
In fact, it must win because football “has an important role in the global arena when it comes to creating understanding between people,” exactly the reason for which the United Nations was honoured!
(Dr N. Janardhan is a UAE-based political analyst and author on Gulf affairs, and honorary fellow of the University of Exeter, UK)
