Never experienced any discrimination due to my religion: Huma Qureshi

New Delhi: Bollywood star Huma Qureshi Saturday said she never experienced any sort of discrimination due to her religion.

Speaking with Sudhir Chaudhary of Aaj Tak on the "Seedhi Baat" show, Qureshi said, “I have never realised that I am a Muslim and different." 

She was reacting to a question on the rights of Muslims in India being infringed that was posed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House recently.

Qureshi spoke about a range of issues including the prevailing societal narratives surrounding body image, nepotism, exploitation in Bollywood, religious identity, the impact of social media, and the depiction of explicit content on digital platforms. 

When asked if she ever felt the pressure for the need to have a size-zero figure, post her gym-look videos on Instagram or undergo surgery for a look change like many others in the film industry, Qureshi said, “This is a problematic narrative. Why should women be under pressure to look young, slim and trim or fair? Indian women are naturally dusky and curvy. And we should celebrate it. Many of the biggest stars from the past to now are not ‘conventionally good-looking’. This is just a narrative that you should look like this, but who has said it?”

When asked about her experience as a Delhi Muslim girl entering Bollywood, the actress said, “The film industry is an extremely secular place and people are also looking at it that way. The people of India don’t look at my name when they watch my films. When you talk of polarization, I only see it in the news that the country is being divided and so on. To tell you a personal lived experience, my mother always kept a yellow dhoti at home because I would play the role of lord Krishna every year. So, I haven’t ever thought of myself as an identity.”

My father has been running a restaurant called Salim’s at Kailash Colony for the past 50 years and we have never felt that way. So, I have never felt that way in my personal experience, but people can feel that way. India is a big country with diverse people. Some will be happy and some won’t. Having said that I feel questions should be asked. As voters and tax-paying citizens, questions should be asked and every government should also answer.”

On whether she ever felt that there was a lot of nepotism and exploitation in Bollywood during her early days in the industry, Qureshi said, “Bollywood is India. The problems that exist in the whole country are also in Bollywood. So, it is not that I wasn’t spoken to rudely, removed from a film or someone tried taking undue advantage of me. But these problems do not only exist in Bollywood. As an Indian woman living today, this is a problem one will face even on the roads of Delhi.” 

Huma also revealed that she had stopped reading reactions to her posts on social media because it had begun to affect her mental health. 

“I stopped reading it because it had affected my mental health and I have realised that I am on social media only so that I can directly say what I have to, to my fans,” she said.

The interview with Huma Qureshi will be telecast on Aaj Tak and Aaj Tak HD on  Saturday, July 8, 2023, at 8:30 PM.