The news that Obama was given the Nobel peace prize evoked mixed reactions around the world. Some people thought it was rather too early to give him the top prize, whereas some thought that it would motivate him to take his body of work to the next level. Our very own Times of India termed it as an "Anticipatory Bail'.

In India awards have often been referred to as objects of appeasement. But you dont expect Nobel prize to work in a similar fashion. If you look at the Nobel Prize history, very often one can see that the choices of awards are very obvious and baffling. Al Gore sure has done a great job with the global warming campaign, but was he at par with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi who inspired an entire generation. Similarly a lot of other such winners can be questioned.

What remains a mystery for all the Indians and followers of Mahatama Gandhi around the world is, how and why did he not win the Nobel Peace Prize. Well the Nobel Prize committee has its set of explanation.

They claim that, Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination in 1948 forced the Nobel Prize committee, who had ‘unanimously’ decided to confer him with the top honour after short-listing the Indian leader for the five times, to abandon the plan. Nobody was conferred with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1948, the website of the committee shows.

It is surprising that Gandhi, the man from whom Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela learnt about non-violence, never deemed qualified to be a Nobel laureate, on four earlier occascions of his nominations.

Mahatma could also have been honoured posthumously in the way former UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjoeld was in 1961, but maybe the Nobel committee, did not see value in appeasing a dead man. They saw more potential in the Obamas and Al Gores.. Atleast now that Obama has the anticipatory bail, he would use it to 'change' the world.