Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls

Nobel Prizes for this year are on. Already the prize for medicine has already been announced to William C. Campbell, Satoshi Ōmura, Youyou Tu on nature based medicines. Prizes in other categories will be announced one by one.

There had been times when Controversies arose over the prizes. Following is the list of some controversial prizes.

1. Literature prize to Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn in 1970. Solzhenitzyn is well known for highlighting the plight of political prisoners sent to labor camps in Siberia. The communist regime of the then USSR had declared the prize as a provocation and he was not allowed to receive the prize. He received the prize after 4 years after he migrated to USA.

2. Peace prize to Henry kissinger and Le Duc Tho, in 1973 is considered as the most controversial. Two members resigned from committee in protest

3. Economics prize to Milton Friedman in 1076 for his work on…

Three people I know and who do not know each other told me last week that they are thinking of leaving India and making a life abroad. They were all deeply disturbed by the Dadri lynching incident and the growing climate of intolerance and violence around us. They all expressed concerns about bringing up their children in a nation where hatred is normal, even a virtue. I feel their pain. I have also not stopped worrying about the future for weeks, though I’m not contemplating leaving the country. Not yet.

Many others I have spoken to in my circle of acquaintances (and let me clarify here that I’m referring mostly to educated, urban Indians in well-paid jobs) dismissed these incidents as collateral damage in electoral politics. Historians like DN Jha (link) and Aparna Vaidik (link) have shown that this is nothing new; cow protection has been…