Nafisa Ali

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Please improve this article if you can. (August 2006)

Nafisa Ali (rear right), with U.S. First Lady Laura Bush and muppets of India's Galli Galli Sim Sim

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 with Dharmendra in 2007. She has also acted in 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.