Madanjeet singh, the UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador and the Founder of the South Asia Foundation is one of the greatest secular humanists of our time. An attack on Malala Yousafzai prompted him to donate one million U.S. dollars to women's education and empowerment.

Madanjeet Singh sponsored the bi-annual Unesco-Madanjeet Singh Prize for the promotion of tolerance and non-violence. He poured 200 million dollars to create South Asia Foundation as a regional secular youth movement and it has now grown to have chapters in eight countries, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Madanjeet Singh has a dream. He dreams of having secularized South Asia, where everybody regardless of gender, color, caste, creed, ethnicity, nationality, race, religion, language, age, marital status, sexual orientation live together and respect each other. He believes South Asia, like the European Union, should have a common currency so that friendly relations between the countries can be created eventually. He also contributed to the green energy technologies, encouraged people in South Asia to generate solar energy.

I had the privilege to meet Madanjeet Singh, an artist, a writer, a dreamer, a courageous truth-teller, a fearless warrior. He has been fighting obscurantism, religious extremism, fundamentalism without any compromise. In today’s world, we do not meet many enlightened persons like Madanjeet Singh who dedicated himself to human rights, women’s rights, secularism, humanism and freedom of expression.

I salute Madanjeet Singh for his great contribution to humanity.