Gandhi Peace Award

The Gandhi Peace Award is an award and cash prize presented annually since 1960 by Promoting Enduring Peace to individuals for "contributions made in the promotion of international peace and good will." It is named in honor of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi but has no explicit connection to Mohandas Gandhi or any other member of the Gandhi family.

Recent Award winners include Ralph Nader (2016), Tom B.K. Goldtooth and Kathy Kelly (2015) and Medea Benjamin (2014).

Since 1960, when the first Award was given to Eleanor Roosevelt, the Award has been presented to "peace heroes" who, in the view of Promoting Enduring Peace, have exemplified the courage of nonviolent resistance to abusive power, armed conflict, and violent oppression. The Award is also intended to recognize individuals for having made significant contributions, through cooperative and non-violent means in the spirit of Gandhi, to the struggle to achieve a sustainable world civilization founded on enduring international peace.

In the 21st Century the Award is especially intended by its presenters to honor those whose lives and works exemplify the principle that international peace, universal socioeconomic justice, and global environmental harmony are interdependent and inseparable, and all three are essential to the survival of civilization.

The Award itself is symbolized by a heavy medallion and a certificate with an inscription summing up the recipient's work. The medallion, forged from Peace Bronze (a metal rendered from decommissioned nuclear missile command systems, evoking "swords into plowshares"), features Gandhi's profile and his words "Love Ever Suffers/Never Revenges Itself" cast in bronze. The Award has been presented at a ceremony held typically once a year in New York or New Haven at which the recipient is invited to present a message of challenge and hope.

The Gandhi Peace Award was conceived by Promoting Enduring Peace’s founder, Yale Professor Jerome Davis. Davis first proposed the award to the board of Promoting Enduring Peace on 13 March 1959, with the name intended to pay tribute to the modern era's foremost advocate of nonviolent resistance, and partly to help rectify the failure of the Nobel Committee to award its Peace Prize to Gandhi before his death in 1948. The Award has been issued since 1960, when it was first presented to Eleanor Roosevelt, and consists of a certificate, a ceremony, and the presentation of a bronze medallion inscribed with a quotation by Gandhi, "Love Ever Suffers / Never Revenges Itself." A prominent New York sculptor, Don Benaron/Katz, was commissioned to create a work of art to serve as the symbol of the Award. He researched Gandhi at the library of the India House in New York City and by 1960 had carved a striking bas-relief portrait in wood of the founder of the century’s international movement for nonviolent change. He wrote of the medallion he also created, “I carved the Gujarati word for peace on one side, and on the other a symbolic plowshare and pruning hook inspired by Isaiah 2:4...″

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