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WITH the buzz surrounding Danny Boyle's Oscar-nominated film Slumdog Millionaire, the world's eyes have been focused on the plight of Mumbai's slum-dwellers, who make up 60 per cent of the Indian city's population. One woman who knows only too well the daily challenges faced by the seven million people living there is Bollywood actress, political activist and member of India's parliament Shabana Azmi, who was last week shortlisted for a major Scottish humanitarian award.
Azmi, 58, is one of three people nominated for The Robert Burns Humanitarian Award, recognising her work as the head of Nivara Hakk ("The Right to Shelter"). The organisation has fought for the rights of slum-dwellers in Mumbai over the past 22 years, rehabilitating 100,000 people and providing free housing to some 12,000 families. Azmi has also tackled the issue of women's rights as well as the fight against Aids, and - as a liberal Muslim - she has spoken out against religious fundamentalism.
"Both of my parents believed that art should be used as an instrument for social change and I am as much an activist as I am an actor," stresses this Bollywood star with a film career stretching back more than three decades, speaking from her home in India. "Art creates a climate of sensitivity, in which it is possible for a change to occur.
"In the movies I've made, I've played characters fighting social injustice. If you're a sensitive artist, it's not possible to treat your work like a 9-6 job and say, 'I'll fight social injustice [at work] and at 6pm I'll return to my air-conditioned comfort and to hell with the people that I have been portraying.' Some of the residue of what you've played during the day is bound to return home with you; I think it was inevitable that I would choose this path."
From an early point in her career, Azmi says, she has felt a strong sense of responsibility, a need to give something back to India and use her position to help those less fortunate. Her father was Kaifi Azmi, one of India's best-known Urdu-language...