Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousufzai wasted little time living up to the accolade she received last week, inviting the leaders of foes India and Pakistan to accompany her and fellow winner Kailash Satyarthi, an Indian child rights activist, to the award ceremony.
However, just hours later, a fresh exchange of fire between troops in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir provided a stark reminder that the prospect of lasting peace remains as distant as ever.
The offices of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his counterpart in Islamabad, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, both declined this week to say whether they would accept Pakistani activist Yousufzai overture to attend the ceremony on Dec. 10.
Photo: EPA
It is a diplomatic hot potato, given the fractious relationship between the nuclear-armed neighbors, who have fought three wars since Pakistan partitioned from India in 1947.
Senior Pakistani analyst Hasan Askari said the joint Nobel award was a clear signal that the international community wanted to see New Delhi and Islamabad working together more to promote peace in the region, but that outside pressure would only go so far.
“The issue of improvement of relations between the two countries is a political issue and, in the past, sometimes the two countries have listened to the international community and sometimes ignored it,” he told reporters. “It really depends if the political leadership wants peace or conflict at this stage.”
Modi invited Sharif to his inauguration ceremony in May, a move widely hailed as an olive branch, but as he hit the campaign trail for state elections last week, the nationalist leader was in a bellicose mood.
“The enemy has realized that times have changed and their old habits will not be tolerated,” Modi said of Pakistan in a speech delivered a day before the Nobel announcement.
He said Indian troops would continue to “speak with their finger on the trigger” after some of the deadliest cross-border firing along their frontier in the disputed Kashmir region in a decade, which saw at least 20 civilians killed.
For those living near the fractious border, the Nobel Peace Prize provided little comfort.
“We are happy that a Pakistani got this peace award, but I don’t think it will help in reducing tension,” said Sardar Mohammad Javed, whose family was affected by the Indian shelling across the border.
There was also little appetite for a Nobel-inspired rapprochement among the Indian public, judging by the reaction on social media to the prize announcement, which highlighted the importance of an Indian and a Pakistani joining in a common struggle.
“Why does everything have a India-Pak or Hindu-Muslim paradigm?” Indian journalist Devirupa Mitra tweeted.
Akhilesh Mishra, a supporter of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party said on Twitter it was “patronizing” to India and Pakistan.
K.G. Suresh, a senior fellow at the Vivekananda International Foundation think tank in New Delhi, said the most the Norwegian Nobel Committee could hope to achieve was to boost morale among those campaigning for peace.
“The Nobel Peace Prize sharing is not going to help India and Pakistan move on from their recent border tensions,” he told reporters. “It is because the mutual acrimony and suspicion is so deep-rooted that a Nobel Peace Prize sharing won’t be able to make much of a difference, except creating some atmospherics among the media and the civil society.”
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