It is a question people are again asking as the Norwegian committee has just announced the prize winner this year -the International Atomic Energy agency and its chief Mohammed ElBaradei.

Gandhi's omission has been widely criticised to the extent that later members of the Nobel committee publicly regretted it.

When the Dalai Lama was awarded the prize in 1989, the chairman of the committee said that this was "in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi".

Gandhi, revered as the Father of the nation in India, was nominated for the prize in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and, finally, a few days before he was murdered in January 1948, notes Øyvind Tønnesson, a former Nobel E-Museum Peace editor.

Information about the nominations, investigations and opinions concerning the coveted award is kept secret for 50 years and no records are available in public domain that could throw light on the matter.
The Nobel Foundation has recently made public some of the details surrounding Gandhi's case for a Peace Nobel.

On behalf of the Friends of India Association in Norway, Ole Colbjørnsen, deputy member of the Norwegian parliament, nominated Gandhi's name thrice - 1937, 1938 and 1939.

In 1937, Gandhi was duly selected as one of 13 candidates on the Norwegian committee's short list.

The committee's advisor, Professor Jacob Worm-Müller, who wrote a report on Gandhi, however was very critical of the Mahatma.

"He is undoubtedly a good, noble and ascetic person - a prominent man who is deservedly honoured and loved by the masses of India...(But) sharp turns in his policies, which can hardly be satisfactorily explained by his followers. He is a freedom fighter and a dictator, an idealist and a nationalist. He is frequently a Christ, but then, suddenly, an ordinary politician," the evaluator noted, according to the documents made available on the foundation's website.

The advisor pointed out that Gandhi was not consistently pacifist and that he should have known that some of his non-violent campaigns towards the British would degenerate into violence and terror.

Moreover, Worm-Müller expressed doubts whether Gandhi's ideals were universal or primarily Indian: "One might say that it is significant that his well-known struggle in South Africa was on behalf of the Indians only, and not of the blacks whose living conditions were even worse."