In the present atmosphere of Hindutva, traditionalism that looks backwards and ongoing protests led by GenZ about the crumbling of democratic and educational structures, writing about the Nobel Prizes may seem incongruous. But there is a common cause: the need for change.

NOBELS 2026  

The 2026 Nobel Peace Prize for Navanethem “Navi” Pillay is not just a ceremonial honour. It’s a moral intervention in a universe where international law is under attack. Her work for peace and international law, including her role in establishing that sexual violence and rape can be considered genocide and crimes against humanity, was cited by the Norwegian committee. She defended anti-apartheid activists in Durban, was a judge and president of the Rwanda tribunal, served as UN human rights chief from 2008 to 2014 and is an ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice in Myanmar’s genocide case. She was instrumental in the ruling that rape is genocide and argued that the law must apply equally, regardless of power. She was chair of the UN commission of inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory from 2021 to 2025, which found reasonable grounds to conclude that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. It made her a target for Israeli and US backlash. But the Nobel Committee’s decision is a clear signal that the fight to hold the powerful to account is not over, even as it is under siege.

Washington's reply was swift. In the hours that followed, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced sweeping sanctions against the International Criminal Court and vowed to "dismantle the ICC, brick by brick." "Either the ICC will stop its threats, or we will stop the ICC," he said, in the wake of the court's 2024 arrest warrants against Israeli leaders for war crimes in Gaza. This is not a legal battle; this is a declaration of war on the idea that the strong can be bound by the same rules as the weak. The same Washington that once championed the Rwanda tribunal now sees a permanent court as a threat when it scrutinises Western allies. As impunity fractures, with BRICS building alternative financial structures and middle powers demanding accountability, the choice is law for all, or law as the language empires use to rationalise their own impunity. Pillay's Nobel proves that no power is untouchable if people are prepared to stand up to it.

Science prizes are not academic curiosities. Basic research sows applications that transform welfare. Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel won the Physiology or Medicine prize for optogenetics. Hegemann found light-sensitive proteins in a tiny alga; Nagel tested them in frog eggs and showed they control electrical signals. In 2003, they suggested using one of the proteins as a tool. In 2005, Deisseroth put the DNA that he got from Nagel into rat nerve cells, making them light-sensitive. By 2007, his group used light to control mouse whiskers; in 2012, with Susumu Tonegawa, they activated a fear memory pathway. Stimulated mice showed fear despite no danger. Optogenetics has transformed neuroscience.

Francis Halzen won the Physics Prize. With John Learned, he proposed in 1988 using Antarctic ice to detect neutrinos, particles that pass through matter with almost no interaction. From 2005 to 2011, he led the building of IceCube at the South Pole, with 5,160 light sensors in a cubic kilometre of ice. In 2013, the team reported detecting neutrinos from deep space, opening a window on exploding stars and active galaxies. We must recall that the India-based Neutrino Observatory, proposed under a mountain of hard charnockite rock in Theni district, Tamil Nadu, floundered and was stopped by unfounded fear-mongering protests and lack of political will.

For the Chemistry Prize, Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai explained how reactions can favour one of two mirror-image molecules. In 1986, Kagan showed that a small excess of one mirror form in a catalyst produced a much larger excess in the product. Soai boosted a 2% excess to 87% in 1995, and by 2003 designed a reaction forming only one mirror image. These reactions matter for pharmaceuticals, where the wrong mirror form can cause harm.

A MIRROR OF INEQUALITY  

The Pillay award reminds us the Nobel has always been political, not a pure measure of merit. Gandhi was nominated five times for Peace and never won; in 1948 the committee found “no suitable living candidate.” Tolstoy was nominated for Literature from 1902 to 1906 and never won—his anarchist views were judged incompatible with the prize’s “idealistic tendency.” Churchill, a wartime leader who could never have received the Peace Prize, won Literature in 1953 for his autobiography. The Nobel is hyped and politicised. Like international law, it is only as impartial as the institutions and politics behind it.

Between 1947 and 2026, about 510 individuals received 515 Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry and Medicine; none resided or worked in India. The US dominates with about 48% of laureates, including naturalised immigrants. The UK follows at 13%, Germany at 8%, France and Japan at 5% each. Sub-Saharan Africa is absent except for white South African-born laureates. Roughly 88% are of white/European origin, including Jewish laureates—about one-fifth of the total. Asians are about 10%, mostly Japanese and Chinese/Taiwanese. Latinos number five or six; Africans two or three, all North African. No Black scientist has won in medicine, physics or chemistry.

This concentration is not accidental. It reflects decades of inequality in access and opportunity for coloured people and the global South. It also follows large public investment in basic research, world-class universities that attract global talent, a culture that rewards risk-taking, and economic power. The US system, for all its flaws, has been extraordinarily effective at attracting and retaining scientific talent. The same is true of Germany, the UK and France. The Nobel system also contains an inherent bias that needs change.

INDIA AND THE NOBEL  

Every October India follows a familiar ritual. Media, parties and social media celebrate winners with Indian-sounding names, those born in India, or those with recent Indian ancestors. Satyarthi’s 2014 Peace Prize, Ramakrishnan’s 2009 Chemistry Prize and Sen’s 1998 Economics Prize became national events. Regional and caste claims multiply. India often claims laureates of Indian descent: Khorana, Chandrasekhar, Ramakrishnan, Banerjee and even Naipaul. Recently Pillay was congratulated as a Tamil descendant, and headlines called her “Indian-origin,” though she is South African. This is vicarious pride, since the work was done abroad in systems India did not build. Ramakrishnan has resisted being identified as Indian and criticised Indian science institutions after attending the 2015 Indian Science Congress in Mumbai, which he described as a circus due to pseudoscience.

Why doesn't India win the Nobel? Only C.V. Raman won a science Nobel for work done in India in 1930; none since. Even though the Nobel is US-Eurocentric, the causes within India's own system are many: underfunded research, rote learning, bureaucratic laboratories, and a casteist culture that rewards hierarchy over originality. The fascination with the Nobel is partly real and partly manufactured. It is a reflection of a genuine hunger for recognition, but it is also a tool to score political points, claim vicarious nationalistic glory and avoid confronting structural failures. We see the Nobel as a critique of national greatness rather than a celebration of individual accomplishment in institutional contexts. Each year the ritual of celebration, assertion, lamentation and forgetfulness produces no serious change in policy. The praise is loud, but the funding and change needed are quietly absent.

CHANGE NEEDED  

Should Indian research care about the Nobel Prize? Not as the primary goal. The pursuit of Nobels leads to disappointment. Transformative discoveries can't be ordered or scheduled. They come from curiosity, freedom and sustained investment. India should build conditions that make them possible: robust funding for basic research, autonomy for universities and laboratories, a culture that rewards originality over hierarchy, and a democratised workplace so talent from all castes and classes can flourish.

India's research infrastructure is inadequate. Public universities are underfunded, laboratories are bureaucratic, and rigid hierarchies stifle creativity. India spends 0.65% of GDP on R&D, versus 3.4% in the US, 2.7% in the UK, 2.8% in China, 5.65% in South Korea and 6.8% in Israel. But money alone is not enough. Inequalities in access and opportunity due to class, caste and privilege must be broken. India must abandon the NEP and its centralised, commercialised and communalised thrust, which is pushing Hindutva into institutions of learning. If this continues, no world-class transformative research in sciences will be possible. In the immediate future, India needs a functional democratic society where questioning and dissent are possible, with scientific temper and funding driving educational and research policies. Basic science, as awarded in 2026, emerges from the dialectic of conjecture and criticism, which can flourish only under such conditions.