Shihab Ghanem became the First Arab to receive India’s Tagore Peace Prize

Emirati poet and translator Shihab Ghanem became the first Emirati and Arab to win the Tagore Peace Prize.

Tagore Peace Prize is instituted by the Indian government to commemorate the birth anniversary of India’s poet, philosopher and Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore.

Shihab  Ghanem is officially going to receive the Tagore award by the Asiatic society in a ceremony to be held in Kolkata on 6 May 2012.

Ghanem was awarded the accolade in recognition of his creative literary and translation works, both in Arabic and English, and for promoting human understanding and values of love and peace Tagore had advocated.

The award is given to one person every two years. Ghanem was chosen due to the promotion of the human values of love and peace via his poetic works. 

Ghanem had written 31 Arabic poems and 36 English poems and had published 45 books mainly in Arabic verse.