Nobel apology leaves Bapu's grandson unimpressed

A Nobel committee member's expression of regret for repeatedly overlooking Mahatma Gandhi for the Peace Prize has left his grandson Gopalkrishna Gandhi and historians distinctly underwhelmed. Dipankar De Sarkar reports.

A Nobel committee member's expression of regret for repeatedly overlooking Mahatma Gandhi for the Peace Prize has left his grandson Gopalkrishna Gandhi and historians distinctly underwhelmed.

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"It really does not behove us to be lamenting the absence of a Nobel for Gandhi, when the committee itself has apologised for this so many times and when Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Aung San Suu Kyi have accepted the Peace Prize in his name," the former West Bengal Governor told HT on Thursday.

Nobel committee member and Conservative Norwegian politician Kaci Kullmann was quoted by a TV news channel on Thursday as saying ignoring Gandhi was "one of the greatest mistakes" of the Nobel.

Gandhi was nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and, finally, a few days before his assassination in January 1948 for the Peace Prize.

"What people forget is that at the time, the idea that the Nobel peace prize would go to a non-European was utterly absurd," said Mihir Bose, author of Raj, Secrets and Revolution, a biography of Subhash Chandra Bose.

"After all, when Tagore was awarded the Nobel, Rudyard Kipling was furious..."