Javed Akhtar has won the the prestigious Richard Dawkins Award 2020 for critical thinking, holding religious dogma up to scrutiny, advancing human progress and humanist values. He is the only Indian ever to win this award.
Previous recipients include Bill Maher and Christopher Hitchens.
The recipient will be a distinguished individual from the worlds of science, scholarship, education, or entertainment, who publicly proclaims the values of secularism and rationalism, upholding scientific truth wherever it may lead, this is the citation.
Says Javed, “I am deeply honoured. I have been a great admirer of Richard Dawkins ever since I read his first book The Selfish Gene. I received an email from him informing me that I had been unanimously selected for the award by the board of Centre for Inquiry USA in which The Richard Dawkins Foundation is housed.”
Javed Saab is familiar with Dawkins’ work. “Richard Dawkins is a fierce advocate of empirical science over superstition. I have read all his books and they have strengthened my own views on the need to expose religious dogma as an enemy of critical thinking and rationality.”