Just Like That | The Nobel Prize which Mahatma Gandhi didn’t get but Trump wants

US President Donald Trump’s pursuit of Nobel Prize illuminates the gap between wanting to be awarded and deserving to be awarded

Watching President Donald Trump’s craving for the Nobel Peace Prize, I have realised that human beings are creatures of recognition. From the dawn of culture, from the giving of feasts and ceremonies to the bestowal of crowns and titles, we have sought not only to achieve, but to be seen to have achieved. Awards, medals, decorations—these are but symbols of that desire: not merely to do, but to matter.

Donald Trump has repeatedly signalled a desire for major international recognition. (AP)

But with that recognition, there is also the risk that the honour becomes less about merit, and more about politics; less about impartiality, more about patronage; less about truth, more about spectacle. The reality is whoever holds power also holds significant influence over what merit looks like, who gets noticed, and who gets rewarded. The criteria may be formal and apparently transparent; but the process is always embedded in networks of influence—political, social, regional, even familial, rewarding loyalty or consolidating political support.

Let us consider India’s Padma Awards—Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan, Padma Vibhushan. Many recipients are truly distinguished. Many are unsung heroes. But over the years, criticisms and controversies have piled up about bias, both geographic and political; about favouritism; about whether lobbying matters; about whether ‘celebrity’ claims overload the list, about political loyalty, and the timing of state elections.

On the international stage, no award symbolises prestige, idealism, and global moral aspiration quite like the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet this too—paradoxically—is not immune to politics, bias, subjectivity, frailty. Mahatma Gandhi, the greatest messiah of non-violence the world has seen for centuries, was nominated several times but the committee in Norway did not consider him fit for it. Was this an objective decision uninfluenced by the colonial hegemony of those times? After 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru was nominated as many as eleven times, but he too never got it. However, Henry Kissinger, adviser to Richard Nixon, who used napalm bombs in Vietnam, did. Rabindranath Tagore’s Nobel Prize for literature in 1913 made every Indian proud, but isn’t there something seriously amiss if after that, while scores of French, British and American writers have got it, no Indian has?

First, it is important to understand: the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by a committee in Norway, with its own rules and internal norms of secrecy. They are meant to honour ‘the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses’ (as per Alfred Nobel’s will). But determining what counts as ‘the most or best work’ is a matter of interpretation. What counts as peace? Peace treaties, yes—but peace built on compromised justice or with collateral suffering?

Donald Trump has repeatedly signalled a desire for major international recognition—among them, the Nobel Peace Prize. He has been nominated by various individuals and governments, including the usual suspects, Israel and Pakistan. But his claim is highly dubious on merits. Even if he has played a role in ending the Israel-Palestine war, few observers can doubt that this has been achieved after he was complicit in one of the most inhuman and relentless bombings in Gaza and elsewhere, killing thousands, most of whom were women and children. To achieve peace after encouraging the pulverising of the other side into accepting a one-sided accord heavily loaded in favour of the victor, is hardly the role of a peace maker. For someone who tweets loudly about deserving prizes, or frames his foreign policy moves in terms of ‘look how much I’ve done’, there is a risk that what is seen as performance overshadows what is seen as substance. Trump’s pursuit illuminates the gap between wanting to be awarded and deserving to be awarded, a gap that is often forgotten by those hankering for recognition.

Of course, we should neither cynically dismiss every award as politicised, nor naïvely accept every recipient as above reproach. Honours do sometimes successfully recognise small acts of courage, marginalised voices, unheralded service. The fact that some awards are misused does not invalidate their capacity for good. But transparency and accountability matter. Where processes are clearer—who nominated whom, what criteria are used, how decisions are reached—the less fuel there is for suspicion. Third, for those who seek honours—politicians, public figures, activists—there is the risk of letting the quest for recognition shape action, rather than letting action be shaped by principle. Finally, institutions that grant honours must guard their own integrity. They should periodically review whether their own past awardees are still defensible in moral, historical, and practical terms; whether their selection procedures are resistant to influence; whether they remain committed to their founding ideal.

The Padma Awards and the Nobel Peace Prize both sit at that cusp between aspiration and actuality. Donald Trump’s shameless campaigning for the Nobel highlights how strong his desire is for global approbation, not the desirability of his getting the prize. Perhaps what we should demand in the case of all prizes is rigorous and honest self-examination; greater openness; and a public culture that prizes the doing of good even without the expectation of decoration. In that way, honours might become less about the greed to be seen, and more about the grace to serve.