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 also 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 also studied Vedanta taught by Swami Chinmayananda ,who
started the center Chinmaya Mission of World Understanding.