Nafisa Ali

Personal Life & Career

Nafisa Ali is a social activist from India.

She is the daughter of the well-known Indian photographer Ahmed Ali, son of S. Wajid Ali and brother of Zaib-un-Nissa Hamidullah.

She has accomplishments in several fields. She was the national swimming champion from 1972-1974. She won the Miss India title in 1976 and was runner-up at the Miss International contest in 1977. Ali was beside a jockey at the Calcutta Gymkhana in 1979. She has acted in several Bollywood films, the notable ones

being "Junoon"(1979) with Shashi Kapoor and "Major Saab" with Amitabh Bachchan (1998), "Bewafaa" (2005) and the most recent being "Life In A... Metro" (2007) and a Malayalam film called "Big B" (2007) with Mammootty.

She is associated with Action India, an organisation working to spread AIDS awareness. She contested the 2004 Lok Sabha elections unsuccessfully from South Kolkata. In September 2005, she was appointed the chairperson of the Children's Film Society of India (CFSI).

She comes from a very diverse theistic background and environment; her mother was a Roman Catholic while her father was Muslim, she married a Sikh man, Col "Pickles" Sodhi .She has beside studied Vedanta taught by Swami Chinmayananda ,who began the center Chinmaya Mission of World Understanding.