Martin
Luther King, Jr. - Letter to the Nobel Institute
January 25, 1967
The Nobel Institute
Drammesnsveien 19
Oslo, NORWAY
Gentlemen:
As the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate of 1964, I
now have the pleasure of proposing to you the
name of Thich Nhat Hanh for that award in 1967.
I do not personally know of anyone more worthy
of the Nobel Peace Prize than this gentle Buddhist
monk from Vietnam.
This would be a notably auspicious year for
you to bestow your Prize on the Venerable Nhat
Hanh. Here is an apostle of peace and non-violence,
cruelly separated from his own people while they
are oppressed by a vicious war which has grown
to threaten the sanity and security of the entire
world.
Because no honor is more respected than the
Nobel Peace Prize, conferring the Prize on Nhat
Hanh would itself be a most generous act of peace.
It would remind all nations that men of good
will stand ready to lead warring elements out
of an abyss of hatred and destruction. It would
re-awaken men to the teaching of beauty and love
found in peace. It would help to revive hopes
for a new order of justice and harmony.
I know Thich Nhat Hanh, and am privileged to
call him my friend. Let me share with you some
things I know about him. You will find in this
single human being an awesome range of abilities
and interests.
He is a holy man, for he is humble and devout.
He is a scholar of immense intellectual capacity.
The author of ten published volumes, he is also
a poet of superb clarity and human compassion.
His academic discipline is the Philosophy of
Religion, of which he is Professor at Van Hanh,
the Buddhist University he helped found in Saigon.
He directs the Institute for Social Studies at
this University. This amazing man also is editor
of Thien My, an influential Buddhist weekly publication.
And he is Director of Youth for Social Service,
a Vietnamese institution which trains young people
for the peaceable rehabilitation of their country.
Thich Nhat Hanh today is virtually homeless
and stateless. If he were to return to Vietnam,
which he passionately wishes to do, his life
would be in great peril. He is the victim of
a particularly brutal exile because he proposes
to carry his advocacy of peace to his own people.
What a tragic commentary this is on the existing
situation in Vietnam and those who perpetuate
it.
The history of Vietnam is filled with chapters
of exploitation by outside powers and corrupted
men of wealth, until even now the Vietnamese
are harshly ruled, ill-fed, poorly housed, and
burdened by all the hardships and terrors of
modern warfare.
Thich Nhat Hanh offers a way out of this nightmare,
a solution acceptable to rational leaders. He
has traveled the world, counseling statesmen,
religious leaders, scholars and writers, and
enlisting their support. His ideas for peace,
if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism,
to world brotherhood, to humanity.
I respectfully recommend to you that you invest
his cause with the acknowledged grandeur of the
Nobel Peace Prize of 1967. Thich Nhat Hanh would
bear this honor with grace and humility.
Sincerely,
Martin Luther King, Jr.
|
