India, Oct. 19 -- It was a friend in Houston, Texas, who first alerted me to the news that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2026 had gone to Navi Pillay, a South African jurist of Indian origin. He also sent me her photograph. Her face looked familiar. I told him I might have met her when I visited South Africa in 2006 as a journalist with The Tribune.

I had accompanied Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on his visit to South Africa to mark the centenary of Satyagraha, the method of non-violent resistance that Mahatma Gandhi first developed there. The Prime Minister also wanted South Africa's support for the India-US civil nuclear agreement. South Africa, a significant producer of uranium, was an important country to engage in the effort to end Ind...