Sri Sri Ravi Shankar vs Malala: This Nobel Peace Prize debate is as petty as it sounds

The Nobel Peace Prize season is upon us, and it is not the first time when the atmosphere around the prize and the committee’s decision on who wins creates enough hot air to power a modern Hindenburg airship.

The self-styled CEO of Indian spirituality, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (or just Sri Sri), who founded the globally popular Art of Living program and foundation, brings this year’s controversy to you. He reportedly announced that he had rejected the prize before and that previous winner Malala Yousafzai didn’t deserve the honour. He also suggested that he didn’t believe in awards in the first place. (Here is a long list of awards and honours he has received that are advertised on his website.)

There is little to take away from Sri Sri. He has global appeal and has created an empire based on yoga, spirituality and political access and discourse comparable to the West’s socio-political icons such as the Pope or even popular culture activists such as U2 singer Bono (or the other way around, I am not sure).

Why Bono? Well, recently Bono, yet again, took the opportunity to stand on his soapbox and dabble in trying to fix global problems such as the Middle East crisis. He took a guided tour, as only Bono would, with Jordan’s King Abdullah II and his military advisers, surrounded by security guards, and travelled to refugee camps in bulletproof, air-conditioned SUVs. Later, Bono got a byline in The New York Times, where he seemingly wrote everything that was told to him by Jordanian authorities verbatim. But that was not the end of it. Celebrity politics is basically like putting Limca in one’s beer and calling it a cocktail. It is generally short-lived euphoria, a false sense of information and, more often than not, just devoid of any larger purpose (as once said by a senior Red Cross official: ‘these concerts for Africa barely make any difference, money has never been a problem’).

But Bono was not done yet. Later, he decided to bring his soapbox out yet again, this time in order to opine on how to deal with the issue of the terror outfit the Islamic State (ISIS). The singer appeared before a US senate subcommittee to air his solutions on how to tackle the fast-growing problem of ISIS, and he said (hopefully at least some of it is in jest):

“It’s like, you speak violence, you speak their language. But if you laugh at them, when they’re goose-stepping down the street, it takes away their power. So I am suggesting the Senate send in Amy Schumer, Chris Rock and Sacha Baron Cohen.”

But Bono is not the only one who has approached the ISIS crisis by offering unilateral solutions on his own, very questionable, merit. Sri Sri previously has ventured into Iraq during some of the country’s worst times. First in 2007, on the invitation of the now deposed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, he proposed Art of Living programs in Iraqi prisons. He visited Baghdad again in 2008, and then Erbil, in 2014, the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan where his foundation is known to have been involved in the collection of relief materials.

But taking the brand of spiritual-celebrity politics a step ahead, Sri Sri also reportedly approached ISIS unilaterally to look for a peace deal between the terror group and everyone else. However, it seems the effort was futile, as ISIS did not respond very well to the guru’s overtures.

“I tried to initiate peace talks with the ISIS recently but they sent me a photograph of a beheaded body of a man. Thus, my effort for a peace dialogue with the ISIS ended,” he was quoted as saying. “I think the ISIS does not want any peace talks. Hence, they should be dealt with militarily.”

The fact is I don’t even completely disagree with Sri Sri about the Nobel Peace Prize. The Prize is indeed a politically inclined accolade. But then again, that’s not a surprise or a matter hidden behind a cloak. US President Barack Obama won it in 2009 for his only months old work (well, mostly talk) on global nuclear disarmament. So much so that even Obama seemed baffled by the Nobel committee’s decision. Today, nuclear disarmament seems to be a lost cause as Obama comes into his final months as the leader of the free(ish) world (no, the Iran nuclear deal does not count in this context).

But the fact that Sri Sri, a 59-year-old man, thought it was all right to publicly say that Malala Yousafzai, a girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban in 2012 at the age of 15 for trying to go to school, had not done anything to deserve the recognition was not just petty, but a blot on the very concept of being and behaving like an adult. Whether people like it or not, public personalities like both Sri Sri in India or Bono in the US are part of a state’s not-by-design soft power and what they say and do garners attention globally. Politics of a popular cultural icon or a spiritual leader both have the reach and often power as well, and using it in such a disparaging manner such as Sri Sri’s potshot towards Malala is counter-productive mostly to his own perception in the public sphere.

Apple stuffing three new U2 albums for free down every user’s throat seems like an extremely reasonable move compared with listening to a supposed spiritual leader, followed by millions, criticising a teenage gunshot victim for not doing enough.