Story of South Indian Actress and Politician Nagma: Controversy’s every time favorite

Nagma was born to a Muslim mother and a Hindu father. Her father was Arvind Pratapsinh Morarji, whose forefathers hailed from a royal background from Jaisalmer. They later migrating to Gujarat, Porbandar, then finally settling in Mumbai.

Nagma claims she was groped as she arrived for Congress meeting in Meerut. She slapped the man who committed the alleged offense.

Nagma made her acting debut with Baghi, where she played an underage prostitute opposite Salman Khan.

 

It was Hindi cinema’s seventh highest grossing film in 1990.

After her debut film, Nagma became the talk of B-town and many thought that she would go places.

Her Telugu films include 1992’s Gharana Mogudu with Chiranjeevi, Allari Alludu with Nagarjuna Akkineni and Major Chandrakanth with N. T. Rama Rao and Mohan Babu. Her Tamil films include Baasha with Rajnikanth and 1994’s Kadhalan with Prabhu Deva.

After moving back to Mumbai, she told an interviewer in 2001, “The pressure of being the number one actress in Tamil cinema was getting to me. I was unhappy with the kind of films I was doing. I couldn’t do the kind of work I wanted to because I had to go by the dictates of what the audience expected of a much-in-demand actress. I was stagnating so I decided to take a break.”

Again based in Hindi cinema, she focused on supporting roles in films like 2000’s Chal Mere Bhai, which reunited her with former co-stars Karisma Kapoor, Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt. Within a year, Nagma enrolled in the spiritually oriented Art of Living course, eventually teaching it herself in Mumbai and elsewhere.

While based in Mumbai, she continued to work in some Telugu and Tamil movies, such as Allari Ramudu and Citizen, as well as taking leading roles in some Malayalam films.

A vocal supporter of India’s Indian National Congress, she had only formally become a member of the Congress Party in Delhi, reportedly citing its “commitment towards secularism and welfare of the poor and weaker sections” as her reason for joining.

She was also fielded by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as a candidate from Hyderabad for the General Lok Sabha Elections according to an Indo-Asian News Service report.

Nagma has elsewhere been cited as saying that she first supported the Congress Party because of her admiration for Rajiv Gandhi.