New Delhi: It will soon be a month since Navi Pillay was announced as this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner but the Indian government has kept its silence on the award to the Indian-origin jurist. Asked for comment on Tuesday (November 3), the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said it had none.“I have no comments to offer there,” MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said during the ministry’s regular press briefing on Tuesday when asked about Pillay.Born in Durban to an ethnic Tamil family and raised in apartheid South Africa, 85-year-old Navanethem ‘Navi’ Pillay was awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to promote peace and international law.Most recently she served as chair of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which in September last year determined that Israel committed genocide in Gaza.Earlier, Pillay was the UN high commissioner for human rights between 2008 and 2014, and prior to that she was appointed a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda as well as on the International Criminal Court.In her former capacity Pillay had repeatedly raised concerns about alleged human rights violations in Kashmir, including disappearances, extrajudicial killings and unmarked graves, putting her at odds with New Delhi’s resistance to international scrutiny of the region.New Delhi’s conspicuous silence on Pillay’s Peace Prize comes at a time when the Modi government has visibly aligned itself more closely with Israel – which had immediately decried the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to felicitate her – and as its response to the brutal Israeli military campaign in Gaza has attracted scrutiny from human rights advocates.But sources familiar with the matter who spoke to The Wire last month insisted that the government’s silence on Pillay’s prize is not linked to her criticism of Israel; they instead pointed to her interventions as human rights commissioner on Kashmir, which has been a sensitive issue on Raisina Hill, they said.The absence of a congratulatory message for Pillay also recalls earlier occasions when Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not publicly acknowledge major international awards won by prominent Indians critical of the establishment, such as International Booker Prize winners Banu Mushtaq and Gitanjali Shree as well as Ramon Magsaysay Awardees Ravish Kumar and T.M. Krishna.