In the Ninth Month of Presidency
By Syed Osman Sher
Mississauga , Canada
The President of the United States wins the Nobel Peace Prize. This is not the first time that the Nobel Prize Academy, which seems ever to be in pursuit of political correctness, has gone awry.
Not surprisingly, those who are the dissenters of the regimes and ideologies that are distasteful to the West, turn out to be the darlings of the Academy. For instance, without saying anything on their excellence or otherwise, we find that when the cold war was in full steam with Soviet Russia and communism, Leonodovich Pasternak and Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn were awarded the Literature Prize in 1958 and 1970, respectively. Pasternek’s drama, Dr Zhivago, was based on the love affair of a victim of the Russian Revolution. Solzhenitsyn had suffered detention and exile for many years for his dissent with the system.
After the dismantlement of communism in Soviet Russia, it was the turn of China to get its communism denounced. Gao Xingjian, a native of China (now a French citizen), who was accused of spreading ‘intellectual pollution’, and whose writings were termed ‘pernicious’ by the Chinese authorities, was given this prestigious award in 2000.
When the war against terrorism was hoisted on the world because of the September 11 attack on the West’s ‘civilization, freedom and opulence’, and by giving various turns and twists, the religion of Islam was subtly brought to the fore as the real culprit, V.S, Naipaul was awarded the coveted Prize in 2001. Naipaul hates, in his writings, Asian and African cultures, while Islam is his prime target
Similarly, when George W. Bush had declared Iran as an ‘evil’ country, and was bent upon destroying it after Afghanistan and Iraq, not a better candidate for Nobel Peace Prize of 2003 was found than a dissenter of the Iranian regime, Shirin Emadi.
However, this year the judges of the Nobel Committee seem to have lost their wits. Not finding any political correctness even, I must say, (coming to the lighter side of the story) they have probably gained poetic imagination.
There is ghazal sung by Nayyara Noor of Pakistan, I do not know the name of the poet. A couplet thereof has appealed to me very much. I am always trying to find out its meaning. I also know fully well that the Urdu ghazal in its excellence reaches sometimes such heights that it is very difficult to reach there. The couplet is:
Ek Khwab jo dekha a kabhi lay giya dil ko
Ek dard jo uttha na kabhi khaa giya dil ko
A dream which I never dreamt of took away my heart
A pain which I never experienced ate out my heart
When the Nobel Prize Committee announced the Peace Prize for President Obama, I came to know that they too have an excellent poetic quality.
The poor Mr. Obama has not yet conceived ‘peace’, nor has he gone into labor for that, but the Committee has delivered the Peace Prize just in the ninth month of his Presidency.
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