India, Oct. 18 -- This was no ordinary selection.It required guts. And a senseof history. The Nobel Committee in Oslo deciding on the Peace Prize has shown guts in the past, to the world's applause. It has also shown a lack of this, to the world's disappointment. It has often shown a sense of history, especially of history-in-the-making - in its 1964 choice, Martin Luther King Jr., and in its 2014 choice, the 17-year-old Malala Yousafzai. These instances have affirmed the world's sense of rightness. At the same time, its total lack of such sense and capability has often causedthe world to groan: The absence of Mahatma Gandhi from the Nobel Peace Prize list has been written about far too much to bear any repetition. In any case, it does not behove the India of renunciates to go on and on about it. I will not mention, negatively, any laureate to question the selection. But let facts speak for themselves. And statistics. The US, bless that country of pre-Nobel greats such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln, leads all nations with the highest number of Nobel Peace Prize laureates - 27 - out of the total of 113 individuals and 31 organisations. The UK and Switzerland follow, at a respectable distance, with 14 each. Anything not quite right about that accumulation of the medallion? Let us see. Of the 27 US nationals who have received the Nobel Peace Prize, four are US Presidents: Theodore Roosevelt (1906), Woodrow Wilson (1919), Jimmy Carter (2002),and Barack Obama (2009). Should that be cause for discomfort? Not per se. I, forone, rejoiced at Obama's selection though it felt a tad too early. So, no; White House incumbency should not disqualify a person from becoming a Nobel laureate. But waita bit. US secretaries of State have donebetter than US Presidents in the matterof the Peace Prize - Elihu Root (1912),Frank B Kellogg (1929), Cordell Hull (1945), George C Marshall (1953) and, yes,Henry Kissinger (1973). There is more to the Nobel Peace Prize and the US. The awardee last year, Maria Machado of Venezuela, gave her physical Nobel medal to US President Trump as a personal symbol of gratitude, acknowledging what she described as his decisive action following the US capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Trump, on his Truth Social platform, called it "a wonderful gesture of mutual respect". It must be said here that the Nobel Committee had nothing to do with this egregious act. The US has, shall we say, loomed large over the Committee's process. The reason I find this year's selectionof Navanethem "Navi" Pillay gutsy is thatit has extended the Nobel Peace Prizeto reversing a US narrative - not just by the Committee disregarding Trump's self-proposed and publicly aired aspiration for it (that required only good sense), but also by being gutsy for a much larger reason. Pillay, the South African jurist who, in the apartheid trials of Nelson Mandela, was among the lawyers who defended him in court, later became an International Criminal Court (ICC) judge, served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014, and chaired the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory from 2021 to 2025. She has called out the genocide in Gaza - in as many words. She did this, as a highly informed and perceptive observer told me, "in a categorical act". Consider this direct quote from Pillay: "We concluded that the State of Israel is responsible for the commission of four genocidal acts in Gaza with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, as such". That is why the Peace Prize this year shows guts. And a sense of history-in-the-making. Let me move from the NobelCommittee to South Africa. Pillay is thefifth South African to get it, after Chief Albert Luthuli (1960), Bishop Desmond Tutu (1984), and former presidents Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk (shared, in 1993). A Prize for calling out genocide has to bea Prize for that country; in December2023, South Africa instituted proceedings against Israel at the International Court of Justice. It did so under the GenocideConvention, "categorically" accusing Israel of genocidal conduct in Gaza. Rightfrom Mandela's presidency, South Africa has consistently advocated a sovereign,contiguous Palestinian State based onthe 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, co-existing peacefully alongside Israel. South African President CyrilRamaphosa's felicitatory message to Pillay gives the history eloquently. And now for an India-South Africa - Tamil-South Africa - link, which thisPrize vivifies. Navi Pillay and India's Justice S Muralidhar will always be remembered together, for Muralidhar's report as chair of theInternational Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, is organically linked to Pillay's own findings. Pillay is a descendant of Indian Tamils who migrated to South Africa in the1800s as indentured labour. My first thought when I read of the Prize was, "Is she receiving it on behalf of Valliamma R Munuswami Mudaliar. "Valli who," you may ask. Born in 1898 in Johannesburg, Valliamma was a satyagrahi in the great march organised by Gandhi in that country for Indian South Africans' civil rights and self-respect. Having crossed over to the Natal and re-crossed to the Transvaal in defiance of the law, she was detained with Kasturba Gandhi and 12 other women of Indian origin. With them, Valliamma was sentenced to three months' rigorous imprisonment, which they served in Maritzburg prison. Washing other prisoners' clothes was part of the "rigour". Illness bore Valliamma down, and after her release, she succumbed to it on February 22, 1914. When Navanethem "Navi" Pillai walksto receive the medallion, ValliammaM Mudaliar's deathless spirit willwalk beside her. Viva Valli, viva Navi!...