– Ratan Bhattacharjee
The crusade for civil rights has once again been globally recognised with the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize 2022.
The term civil society goes back to Aristotle’s phrase koinōnía politikḗ in his politics, where it refers to a ‘political community’ commensurate with the Greek city-state (polis) characterised by a shared set of norms and ethos, in which free citizens on an equal footing lived under the rule of law.
The telos or end of civil society, thus defined, was eudaimonia often translated as human flourishing or common well-being, as man was defined as a ‘political (social) animal’. The concept was used by Roman writers such as Cicero, who referred to the ancient notion of a republic (res publica). It re-entered the Western political discourse following one of the late medieval translations of Aristotle’s politics into Latin by Leonardo Bruni who first translated koinōnía politikḗ as societas civilis.
One may or may not like it from the political point of rulers everywhere, but the Peace Prize is a victory for civil society, particularly in the home country of the person or persons awarded. Be it Ukraine or Russia, humanist values are trampled every day and millions become victims of militarism and dictatorship. The 2022 Peace Prize, honouring the Nobel vision of peace and fraternity between nations, has been announced for human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski from Belarus, the Russian human rights organisation Memorial and the Ukrainian human rights organisation Centre for Civil Liberties.
Through their consistent efforts in favour of humanist values, anti-militarism and principles of law, this year’s laureates have revitalised and honoured Alfred Nobel’s vision of peace and fraternity between nations. This noble vision is most needed in the world today. We all sense the ever-present corruption, the centralised power, and the empty slogans. But very few among us are fearless enough to stand up and fight.
The individual winner, Bialiatski has been detained without trial in Belarus since last year. He founded the human rights organisation Viasna in 1996 after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko rammed through constitutional changes that gave him broad authority to dissolve parliament, leading to mass protests.
Until the mind is free, the body is enslaved. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” Viasna, or “Spring,” supported the jailed demonstrators and their families. A quarter-century later, the organisation continues to defend free speech and liberty. It has kept a spotlight on thousands of protesters and dissidents in Belarus, who have been jailed and beaten since Lukashenko stole the 2020 presidential election and forced the true winner, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya into exile.
Also honoured was Memorial, the human rights organisation synonymous with the democratic hopes of the late 1980s and 1990s in the Soviet Union and Russia, and which the Russian authorities forced to close. In addition to tracking human rights abuses, Memorial created a vast and treasured archive on the victims of Joseph Stalin’s repression, out of the conviction, as the Nobel Prize announcement put it, that “confronting past crimes is essential in preventing new ones.” In the same spirit, the award also went to Ukraine’s Centre for Civil Liberties, which has attempted to “identify and document Russian war crimes against the Ukrainian civilian population.”
Reports have emerged that three Indians, AltNews co-founders Pratik Sinha, Mohammad Zubair and Harsh Mander, have been nominated. According to Time, the co-founders of fact-check site AltNews, Sinha and Zubair, are among those who could be considered to win the prize based on nominations that were made public via Norwegian lawmakers, predictions from bookmakers, and picks from the Peace Research Institute, Oslo. The two “have relentlessly been battling misinformation in India” amid accusations of discrimination against Muslims “and have methodologically debunked rumours and fake news circulating on social media and called out hate speech”, the publication said.
There were about 343 candidates – 251 are individuals and 92 are organisations – in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize 2022.
Although the Nobel Committee did not announce the names of the nominees, neither to the media nor to the candidates, a Reuters survey found Belarusian opposition politician Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, broadcaster David Attenborough, climate activist Greta Thunberg, Pope Francis, Tuvalu’s foreign minister Simon Kofe, and Myanmar’s National Unity Government are among those nominated by Norwegian lawmakers.
The chosen few Peace Prize laureates have for many years promoted the right to criticise power and protect the fundamental rights of citizens. They have made an outstanding effort to document war crimes, human rights abuses and the abuse of power. Together they demonstrate the significance of civil society for peace and democracy. “The Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to honour three outstanding champions of human rights, democracy and peaceful co-existence in the neighbouring countries Belarus, Russia and Ukraine,” said the committee.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Memorial grew to become the largest human rights organisation in Russia. In addition to establishing a centre of documentation on victims of the Stalinist era, Memorial compiled and systematised information on political oppression and human rights violations in Russia.
The Peace Prize laureates represent civil society in their home countries. Berit Reiss-Andersen, head of the Nobel Committee, announces on October 7 the winner of this year’s Peace Prize in Oslo. By awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 2022 to Bialiatski, Memorial and the Centre for Civil Liberties, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wished to honour three outstanding champions of human rights, democracy and peaceful co-existence in the neighbour countries Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.
With the rise of a distinction between monarchical autonomy and public law, the term civil society gained currency to denote the corporate estates (Ständestaat) of a feudal elite of landholders as opposed to the powers exercised by the prince. It had a long history in state theory and was revived with particular force in recent times, in Eastern Europe, where dissidents such as Václav Havel as late as in the 1990s employed it to denote the sphere of civic associations threatened by the intrusive holistic state-dominated regimes of Communist Eastern Europe.
The first post-modern usage of civil society as denoting political opposition stems from the writings of Aleksander Smolar in 1978–79. However, the term was not in use by the Solidarity labour union in 1980–1981.
After conferring the Nobel Peace Prize this year to civil society activists, the term will get a new lease on life. It will encourage the fight against injustice and injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere and this is what the Nobel Committee recognised this year.
(Dr Ratan Bhattacharjee is a senior academician and columnist)