Chitra Subramaniam| The News Minute| October 10, 2014| 3.30 pm IST
The Nobel Prize to Indian and Pakistani child rights activists KailashSatyarthi and Malala Yousafzai goes beyond international recognition of their work and struggle. Is it also a message to New Delhi and Islamabad to walk the road of peace at a time when the threat of ISIS looms large on all nations especially Western Europe, West Asia and India?
The recognition also comes at a time when both nations are armed to the teeth in the hope that it will play the role of a calming of nerves necessary not just at the Indo-Pak border, but also beyond. The reference that a Hindu and a Muslim won the prize by the Nobel Committee however is out of place.
This is not the first time that such a message has sought to be conveyed.
In 1994, when the Palestinians and Israelis were within touching distance of a truce brokered by the United States of America (USA), the Nobel Peace Prize was given to the then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the then Israeli President Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat of Palestine.
Rabin was assassinated in 1995, shattering all hopes of peace within and outside Israel. The award remains a hope and a token to what was possible and it is even more critical today than it was 20 years ago when the region was far turbulent.
A year earlier in 1993, one year before South Africa held its first free election, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Nelson Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk, the man who belonged to a party that had kept Mandela locked up in Robben Island for 27 years. In the run up to that award, many commentators had asked why de Klerk? Many years later Mandela had said it takes as much to make peace as it does to make war – perhaps even more so for the former. South Africa is far from resolving many of the issues it faced as it became a free and democratic nation, but giving up hope would be an invitation to disaster.
It is ironical that Alfred Nobel, the man who made dynamite went on to constitute one of the world’s most important peace prizes. What today’s medal will mean to child rights in India and Pakistan as well as millions of children around the world who face daily threats to life remains to be seen. But for now, it is time to celebrate.When hope is lost, all else is lost.
