The Audacity of Nobel peace prize.
It was only yesterday evening that I picked off from my bookshelf ‘The Audacity of Hope’ published in 2006 for reading. Most know Obama speaks well. He writes well too. I managed to finish 2 chapters on the trot. Coincidentally today morning I saw the headline in the paper announcing that Oslo has bestowed the 2009 peace prize on the US president, only the third time it has done so on incumbent US presidents. Usually prizes are given for demonstrated achievements, but glaringly it is not the case presently since Obama is only in his 9th month of presidency. Even though he has aroused lots of hope with his pronouncements, there are no tangible results yet. So this could be described as a prize for hope, which puts a positive burden of expectations on Obama’s shoulders to deliver. It may also be an effect of the day after hangover from the excessive military binge & the greed of Wall Street let loose by Bush presidency. The Bush-made confrontationist & belligerent world order based on what Naomi Klein describes as disaster capitalism so frightened everybody else that anybody who stepped in his place with a moderate stance would appear a messiah. No doubt the mess that Obama is expected to clear, though not of his own making, is daunting. May be the Nobel Prize committee expects this early award to spur him on to do just that.
This is what Obama says in his book : “We can make claims on their (values) behalf, so long as we understand that our values must be tested against fact & experience, so long as we recall that they demand deeds and not just words (P69)“. This is the standard by which he will be judged whether his was a deserving case.
The Repugnant Murder.
Inspector Fransis Induwar was first abducted by Maoists on 30th September and a few days later murdered & beheaded. This is a most despicable act & needs to be condemned in the strongest terms. Whatever mitigating factors are brought to the fore or however loose standards are used to judge, it remains a most repugnant murder. Maoists claim to work for protecting the interests of poor & tribals in the most wretched parts of India. If they think that they would be serving the cause of their avowed constituency by indulging in such brutal, senseless acts, then they are sadly mistaken. They only have to look at what happened to LTTE in Sri Lanka. The plight of the Lankan Tamils truly needed for someone to take up their cause. LTTE did that effectively initially. But later it indulged in bitter internecine war with armed Tamil groups & annihilated them completely, and had been engaged in wanton terrorist attacks against the Sinhala majority & the Sri Lankan government. They had a good opportunity to reach negotiated settlement with the Lankan government where Norway was acting as an interlocutor. They spurned that opportunity drunk on their armed might & blinded by their ideology. It led to their complete rout & destruction. Where has that left the Tamils for whose betterment they avowedly worked? It is not that Indian state lacks the might to crush the Maoists movement militarily. But what has kept it so far from doing so is the pluralistic democracy that we have where the plight of poor & tribals has had to be recognized & catered to even if willy-nilly. Such dastardly acts will only lead Maoists from becoming a feared but hated outfit like Al Qaeda. What will follow is strident support for the government decision to engage them militarily & smash their network. Then the grain (tribals) will burn with the chaff (Maoists) leaving the tribals worse off than they were.
O O O O O O O O O O O
Tags: Al Qaeda, Fransis Induwar, Maoists, Nobel Peace Prize, Obama
17 October 2009 at 18:33 |
Dear Baba,
As you say usually prizes are awarded based on demonstrated achievements,
and I totally agree….infact, i think that should always be a compulsory
criterion! And perhaps most of all in the case of the Nobel prize,
as popular belief holds it, unless I’m much mistaken, to be the highest
international award one can receive! So in this case, I dispute
Barack Obama’s credentials to be honoured thus, even if they are based on
hope!
As some have said, this is encouragement for him to fulfil his “mission”,
but if he is really dedicated to his “cause”, then I really doubt his
neediness for special encouragement.
If this puts a burden of delivering on his shoulders, then I think that
burden was VERY much there since the moment he got elected (or maybe even
before, AS he got elected)! And I wonder if the additional burden (even in
the form of a pre-achievement Nobel), would lie long on his back for long,
as important events rub-off with time!
In any case, although I’m unaware of them, I should suppose the Nobel
committees “watchdogs” are well-informed of many more-deserving cadidates,
the most having unfortunately lost their chance this year.
Then again, if an orchestrating mass murderer like Henry Kissinger can get
the Nobel PEACE Prize, Obama is certainly a better candidate…..but are we
going to judge him by that yard-stick?? I should think NOT!!
On another note, the Naxals chosen methods are not going to yield any
results. By going on a killing spree, that too against policemen, they are
not going to achieve their goals (assuming, of course, that their goals are
the same as they started out to be and not eradicating policemen from the
interiors of India)!
It is a much hushed-up fact that the central and state governments are
committing huge atrocities on tribals & villagers (unfortunately
largely through the police), while also playing up & exaggerating the Naxal
“menace” to the point of lying, but that doesn’t mean that the Naxals method
of going about things is justified. They don’t seem to see beyond
eliminating police personnel!
Incidentally, the late Inspector Francis Induwar was also a tribal from
Chattisgarh, according to an Indian Express report!
Angad Patwardhan