Doing Good and Do-Gooders

"It's all very well for do-gooder Scandinavian types to try to nudge them together, but it's not going to mean much. It's just symbolic, with protocol gestures."
Burzine Waghmar, South Asia Institute, School of Oriental and African Studies, London

"The Nobel Committee regards it as an important point for a Hindu and a Muslim, an Indian and a Pakistani, to join in a common struggle for education and against extremism."
Nobel Committee declaring winners of the Nobel Peace Prize

"Alone, Malala [Yousafzai] and [Kailash] Satyarthi are both great individuals whose work in education with young people links them. But it's too simplistic to boil down their identities to Hindus, Muslims, Indians and Pakistanis -- and makes them part of their national jingoism, which neither have chosen to do."
Nikita Sud, associate professor of development studies, University of Oxford

"It is a nice gesture, but I don't think this will have any real impact."
"This does reflect in the seriousness of the problem, but the malice between the two countries is too deep for such symbolism to carry much weight."
N. Bhaskara Rao, chairman, Centre for Media Studies, Delhi

Hindu-majority India's indigenous Muslim population stands at a whopping 138-million, out of an entire population of 1.252 billion, while the total population of 182-million Pakistanis holds 2.5-million Hindus, most of them lower-cast Dalit who at with partition in 1947, were unable to make the journey to India, a relocation that saw millions of people, both Hindu and Muslim, migrate from one country to the other, to live in the majority-religious country reflecting their religion.

During that historical partition of India when Pakistan was born and the exchange of people took place, a paroxysm of religious hatred took centre stage as Hindus and Muslims attacked one another crossing into the new border when British rule came to an end in India, resulting in the deaths of millions of people. Now, 80% Hindu-dominated India and 97% Muslim-dominated Pakistan both possess nuclear weapons stockpiles and the bitter relations that led to three wars still dominate.

Relations between Hindus and Muslims in each of the countries remain restive, to say the very least. But it is India and always has been India that has made the effort to ensure that relations not be strained from within their populations. And it has been Pakistan, always Pakistan, that has encouraged the rise of Islamist groups to terrorize their neighbours, around the flashpoint of Kashmir as each country aspires to 100% the territory in Kashmir.

AFP Photo

"We want India and Pakistan to have good relations, and the tension that is going on is really disappointing. It's very important that the countries have peace. This is how they are going to progress."
"This award is for all those children who are voiceless, whose voices need to be heard. I speak for them. And I join them in their campaign. They have rights. They have the right to receive quality education, they have the right not to suffer from child labour, not to suffer from child trafficking. They have the right to live a happy life."
Malala Yousafzai

The lesser-known Mr. Satyarthi has devoted his life to freeing thousands of children from slave-labour conditions, and as leader of the rights group he founded Bachpan Bachao Andolan, and director of the South Asia Coalition Child servitude, he strenuously advocates for child-labour reforms. As a vigorous campaigner for human rights he has faced down threats whose scope can be imagined by the fact that at least two people who worked alongside him have been murdered.

"Child slavery is a crime against humanity. Humanity itself is at stake here. A lot of work still remains but I will see the end of child labour in my lifetime", the 60-year-old stated with conviction.

Kailash Satyarthi has fought child labour for decades. Khannachandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images

India's new Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited his Pakistan counterpart to his May investiture. This was yet another time when it seemed to the world that relations between the two countries might finally warm. Yet the Nobel announcement came at the time of still another number of skirmishes between the Pakistani and Indian armies over their unending competition respecting Kashmir. Each claiming the other provoked the violence.

For his part, Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif an Islamist, made an effort to cool down the situation, stating that "war is not an option". His office released a statement that went a little further: "It is a shared responsibility of the leadership of both countries to immediately defuse the situation." Yet it is never India that provokes hostility and violence against Pakistan; rather Pakistan encourages Islamist militias to attack India, as Lashkar-e-Taiba, with connections to Pakistan's military attacked Mumbai in 2008.

So, from the Nobel Committee's wish that conferring such a prize on members of each country whose outstanding humanitarian work to give a voice to vulnerable children, would somehow have a magical effect on lifting the pathologies at play between two countries living beside one another as restive neighbours harbouring suspicion and rancour against one another, hope, it seems, really does spring eternal.

Whether the 'feel-good' moment will last more than a week is another story. India's Prime Minister Modi offered his congratulations to both Nobel Peace Laureates. Pakistan's Prime Minister Sharif congratulated Malala alone, as he text -messaged reporters from his office.

The Noble Nobel Peace Prize

"I am absolutely convinced that it's being misused for Norwegian political purposes, and the convenience and vanity of Norwegian parliamentarians."
"The prize has now been misused for so long. Without profile or purpose, it's being spread out at random and crumbles in all directions. There is an absolute and total confusion of what peace idea it should support. It's not a prize for peace in general."
"What they always forget is that it's not their ideas -- about what the words can be used for -- which counts, but what Nobel himself had in mind when he used the words. And he wanted to support an idea, the peace idea of the period."
Fredrik Heffermehl, Norwegian lawyer, Nobel Peace Prize skeptic

The Nobel Peace Prize Laureates and members of the Nobel committee during the awards ceremony.

A sponsoring letter from some recognized entity like a member of a national government, or a member of an international court, a university rector or chancellor, even a professor of social science, history, philosophy, law or theology can advance a nomination to the Nobel Prize Committee for consideration of acceptance as a nominee, and from there to the final choice for the year's award, of the committee.

Although it was a Swedish industrialist, Alfred Nobel, wishing to make social-conscience amends for having invented dynamite, and despairing of its use in conflict, who used his riches to invest in annual presentations of Nobel prizes in science, literature, medicine and the ultimate, the peace prize, it was given as a special 'gift' to Sweden's neighbour Norway to administer the prize for peace.

The 1895 will of the Swedish industrialist specified, however, that the peace prize should be awarded to "champions of Peace", those who advance the causes of "fraternity between nations, reduction or abolition of standing armies and the promotion of peace congresses". Once the nominations have been received, a shortlist is developed and the selection of the winner of the award is released to the news media in October.

"Not everything worthy of admiration should win the Nobel Peace Prize", commented Jay Nordlinger, senior editor of National Review, author of the 2012 book Peace, They Say: A History of the Nobel Peace Prize, The Most Famous and Controversial Prize in the World. As far as Mr. Nordlinger is concerned, the prize committee of the Norwegian parliamentarians is "way too far afield", selecting "screwy" prizes to individuals whose work has little to do with peace.

"I wouldn't have given a peace prize to a Kenyan environmentalist [Wangari Maathai, 2004], dear as she was, who planted trees. I wouldn't give a peace prize to global-warming campaigners [Al Gore and the IPCC, 2007]. I think that was just a fashion of the time. It's sort of like a pretzel; you can't twist it endlessly." No mention, unfortunately, of the rather premature award to U.S. President Barack Obama.

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama depart Oslo City Hall following the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo, Norway, Dec. 10, 2009.

Mahatma Gandhi had been nominated, no fewer than five times. He was never chosen to win the award. Roughly two hundred nominees are received annually. NSA leaker, American fugitive Edward Snowden, and James Anaya the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples are two of the nominees this year. Uruguayan president Jose "Pepe" Mujica was also nominated for legalizing pot.

"It's such a prestigious thing, it can be used as a club", Mr. Nordlinger said, who in his book quotes Desmond Tutu, former Anglican South African Archbishop as commenting after he received the prize, that it made of him an "instant oracle". Lech Walesa related to Mr. Nordlinger that Solidarity might never have succeeded in Poland without the prize, because it "blew wind into our sail".

John Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said of his own failed 2007 nomination: "The Nobel Peace Prize has become hopelessly politicized. I think it cheapens the prize itself. At least they didn't give Gore the prize for economics".

Richard Dawkins Perplexed by High Number of Jewish Nobel Prize Winners

October 29, 2013 2:30 pm

Author:

Zach Pontz

Tags:

Atheist Jewish Jewish Nobel Jewish Virtual Library muslims New Republic Nobel Peace Prize Richard Dawkins Trinity College tweet

Richard Dawkins. Photo: Wikipedia.

 

The usually self-assured biologist, author and atheist Richard Dawkins expressed his bewilderment at the disproportionate amount of Nobel prizes won by Jews in a recent interview with the New Republic, saying he is “intrigued by” the  “phenomenally high” number of Jewish laureates.

Addressing the controversy surrounding a Tweet he wrote during the conferment of Nobel prizes earlier this month, Dawkins offered up something of a mea culpa, stating: “That was unfortunate. I should have compared religion with religion and compared Islam not with Trinity College but with Jews, because the number of Jews who have won Nobel Prizes is phenomenally high.”

Continuing, he said: “Race does not come into it. It is pure religion and culture. Something about the cultural tradition of Jews is way, way more sympathetic to science and learning and intellectual pursuits than Islam. That would have been a fair comparison. Ironically, I originally wrote the tweet with Jews and thought, That might give offense. And so I thought I better change it.”

Asked why he thought it is that Jews have won so many Nobel Prizes, Dawkins was forthright with his uncertainty.

“I haven’t thought it through. I don’t know. But I don’t think it is a minor thing; it is colossal. I think more than 20 percent of Nobel Prizes have been won by Jews.”

According to the Jewish Virtual Library, since the Nobel was first awarded in 1901 approximately 193 of the 855 honorees have been Jewish (22%). Jews make up less than 0.2% of the global population.

This year 6 of 12 laureates were Jewish. The 13th laureate, for the Nobel Peace Prize, was awarded to an organization and not an individual.