Why should war be celebrated with an award for peace?

You could have knocked me down with a feather when I heard that the European Union was awarded the 2012 Noble Peace Prize.

I must have visited the offices of the European Commission and the European Union scores of times in Brussels during my years of public service in Britain, but never once had I imagined that the entire bloc of nations - boils, warts and all - would be awarded the world's most famous peace prize.

I don't have anything against the EU. I think it was a fabolous idea to bring people and economies of such diverse and war-torn nations together on a single front that hoped to transform an entire continent and make it a second shangri-la. But it has been a bag of mixed results.

The Euro has failed miserably, and it is only the egos of the German Chancellor and the French Prime Minister who refuse to see its failure that's  keeping it propped up. I still remember the days after the Euro was introduced and I would visit countries such as Italy or Spain. The people there seemed really angry. Suddenly, everything was costing double, but everyone was still being paid the same.

Anyway, my main grouse against the EU being awarded the Peace Prize is two-fold.

Alfred Noble, who has often been described as the 'merchant of death' doling out the world's most famous peace prize as he invented dyanmite, had instituted the Peace Prize to be given "to the person or society that renders the greatest service to the cause of international fraternity, in the suppression or reduction of standing armies, or in the establishment or furtherance of peace congresses."

Thus there are two problems about awarding the prize to the EU.

When Noble said he wanted to give the prize to a person or a society, he meant just that. He wanted to recognise individual contribution or organisational contribution - the word society referred to charitable and other organisations rather than to society at large. And by no stretch of imagination can the EU be called an organisation - it is at best an entire bloc of nations. One just doesn't award a prize of this magnitude to a whole bloc of countries. It sounds downright stupid. Imagine what they will do next: a prize for SAARC, another glorious one for OPEC, followed by another silly one for NATO or ASEAN.

The second reason - and this is the stronger reason - for not awarding it to the EU is that this is one of the most war-torn regions in the world. Their recent history is full of war, and not peace. The list of wars in the last 40 years in Europe have claimed millions of lives and they show no sign of easing:

1989 Romanian Revolution

1991 Ten-Day War

1991–1992 South Ossetian War of Independence

1991–1993 Georgian Civil War

1991–1995 Croatian War of Independence

1992 War of Transnistria

1992 Ossetian-Ingush conflict

1992–1993 First War in Abkhazia

1992–1995 Bosnian War

1993 Cherbourg incident

1993 Russian constitutional crisis

1994–1996 First Chechen War

1997 Unrest in Albania

1998–1999 Kosovo War

1998–present Dissident Irish Republican campaign

1998 Second War in Abkhazia

1999 Dagestan War

1999–2009 Second Chechen War

1999–2001 Insurgency in the Preševo Valley

2001 Insurgency in the Republic of Macedonia

2002 Perejil Island crisis

2004 Unrest in Kosovo

2004 Adjara crisis

2007–present Civil war in Ingushetia

2008 Unrest in Kosovo

2008 War in South Ossetia

2009–present Insurgency in the North Caucasus

2011–present Kosovo–Serbia border clashes

So here is a whole continent that is now a failed experiement in economics, has the most volatile political landscape in the world, has a list of wars and conflicts in the last 40 years that has led to the loss of millions of lives and the displacement of several more, has certainly not reduced its standing armies (one of the conditions for the Noble Peace Prize), does not seem to have leadership that can lead the region out of their current predicaments, and yet... what does the Noble Committee do? It thinks it can award the world's most famous peace prize to this region beacuse it either did not have the ability to find someone or something more deserving, or it decided to pull wool over everyon'e eyes by becoming as politically correct as anyone can get.

Too much fasting is injurious to your health

anna hazare meant a lot to me in the good old days. here is someone who cares about corruption, i thought. here is someone who is able to get the masses behind him in his fight against corruption. this looked just like what the doctor ordered.

i even went to one of his rallies in bangalore when i was visiting there, made a donation, shouted a few slogans and felt the mood of anger in the general public. and what is more, i even bought a sticker that said 'i am anna hazare' and stuck it on my suitcase.

now of course, i am having second thoughts about this whole thing.

let's start from the sticker: what does 'i am anna hazare' really mean? i am NOT anna hazare really. anna hazare is anna hazare, and all the rest of us may if we so desire, love him, hate him, follow him or trample him. but for heaven's sake how can all of us be anna hazare? something did not sound just right.

the second problem is that anna's own sidekicks don't seem all that pure-as-snow types. i mean - if u r pointing an accusing finger at someone else for corruption, you should be free from that painful malady, right? but look at what good old kiran bedi got accused of. we read that she had smudged her travel records and collected more dosh on train tickets from charities than she ought to have. come on everyone - how can one accuse others of corruption and do the dirty oneself to earn a wee bit of moolah? how often have we heard that you shouldn't throw stones if you are living in a glass house?

then there is this kejriwal chap and his income tax scandal. i couldn't understand how one can face charges form the tax authorities if one was above board and below corruption. physician heal thyself - is an old adage that is still very much valid.

but to top it all - and what i found immensely frustrating - was that anna and his camp seem to be overdoing  this fasting  thingy.

i mean one can fast for health, for austerity, for religion and even in protest, i admit. but you cannot keep threatening everyone that you will keep fasting at the drop of every murky hat in existence. people get tired after some time. you can only fast so much and you can only hold the nation to ransom with your threats of fasting so much. after some time, people stop caring whether you fast, feast, stuff your belly or go hungry. and lets all be honest - how much fun is it to keep watching an old man who has very little oratory skills, and his bunch of sidekicks all of whom look like do-gooders-gone-berserk on tv every other day? it's not even like they are doing anything new: its the same old story of 'i-am-gonna-fast-and-all-of-you-better-listen-to-me-when-i-fast' that people feel tired and weary of hearing.

now of course, and very wisely i hope, they seem to have got on to the fact that people are tired of their fasting antics. remember what anna tried to do in mumbai, and gave up fasting when no one turned up to support him? he must have learned from that experience because all they seem to be busy doing nowadays is to fast one day in between when they feel that they have not had some limelight or media attention for some time. i guess a one day fast is not that bad on the belly - even my grandmother used to do that every fortnight on the ekadashi day in the hindu calendar, but no newspapers or tv channels ever covered the dear lady's fasts.

but what really put me off anna hazare and his team of do-gooders is that they say one thing and do another. they said they would not play a part in politics, but what did they do? they went all out to get the congress in the up state elections. they promised us they would not indulge in character asssination, but they went all out to malign pranab mukherjee after his presidential election.

to me this was disgusting. mahatma gandhi rightly said that one should become the change one wants to be. anna's group does not seem to have heard gandhi right.

but what is bewildering to me is that the media have suddenly started calling them the 'civil society group'. since when have anna hazare and his movement represented the entire civil society in india? they probably have a large following in some sections of civil society - predominantly the urban middle class who are educated and fed up with corruption and have a lot of time on their hands to stand on street corners waving 'i am anna hazare' flags - but they most certainly don't represent me. and i am also a part of the civil society in india. i am sure there are many others who feel the same.

anna probably means well - i am not disputing it at all.

but he should know his limits. he should not keep people who have questionable backgrounds as his flag-bearers. he should stop treating every politician as suspect. he should not allow his people to use character assasination techniques to make a point. and most importantly - he should stop threatening everyone with a fast at the drop of a hat.

too much fasting will be injurious to his health - and the nation's.