Women's reproductive rights As
UNFPA Goodwill Ambassador, Azmi participated in a march at the
Taj Mahal on
World Health Day in 2001 to draw attention to the "number of women who still die of causes related to pregnancy and childbirth each year." After the world population crossed six billion in October 1999, Azmi said that "350 million women" globally did not have access to "safe and effective family planning methods." She advocated for policy reform that encouraged men and women to be "equal partners in decisions related to reproductive health issues." She cited the "success stories in
Tamil Nadu and
Kerala" where similar policies had been implemented. "You need to have access to safe methods of contraception and a mix of contraceptive services, ensure safe motherhood, to bring down infant mortality and empower women in their decision-making abilities," she said, "All this is there in the Reproductive and Child Health (RCH) programme in India since 1997. If we would merely implement the programme, we would be successful."
Hunger strike against the 1985 Sanjay Gandhi Nagar slum demolition In April 1986, Azmi was one of five people, including
Anand Patwardhan, who went on an "indefinite hunger strike to demand alternative housing sites for evicted residents of Sanjay Gandhi Nagar,
Mumbai." The strike was part of "an ongoing struggle for the rights of slum and pavement dwellers, who are constantly under attack by civic authorities." She criticised the media for not questioning why the slum-dwellers were on a strike, and spoke about the prejudice that slum-dwellers face. Azmi said that many people assume that slum-dwellers are not "working people" and consider slums to be areas "where crime takes place [and] illicit liquor is brewed." She called for them to be "viewed more sympathetically." The strike was under the aegis of Nivara Hakk, a housing rights NGO that Azmi later joined. In 1986, the Maharashtra government offered the Sanjay Gandhi Nagar residents a three-acre plot in
Goregaon for rehabilitation. Nivara Hakk helped to level the barren land, and architect P.K. Das designed low-rise buildings.
HIV/AIDS prevention and management In October 2001, Azmi spoke at the Sixth International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific on preventing HIV and safeguarding reproductive health. She appealed to the "influential leaders" to dedicate intellectual and financial resources for tackling the HIV/AIDS epidemic. She also encouraged "film stars, sportspersons and other celebrities" to "voluntarily convey
HIV/AIDS prevention and control message to the people." She called upon the policymakers to target adolescents "as a priority group" for their prevention work. "The issues of sexuality and sexual health must be taken out of the closet. We need to realise that adolescents are increasingly involved in sexual activity and that they are not fully informed of the risks of HIV infection or other sexually transmitted diseases," she said, "If the government does not ensure adolescents access to unbiased information on HIV/AIDS and the means to avoid infection. There is a real danger that the epidemic could grow out of proportion in the very near future." After the first case of HIV/AIDS was detected in India in the 1980s, Azmi starred in a
Doordarshan advertisement aimed at dispelling the commonly-believed myth that HIV/AIDS spreads through physical touch. In the ad, she is seen hugging a child, presumably an AIDS patient, and saying: "Chhoone se AIDS nahi hota. Chhoone se sirf pyar failta hai." (AIDS is not spread through touch. Only love spreads by touch). She later mentioned that the ad achieved the "highest recall among ads" that year. In a
Bengali film
Meghla Akash (2001), directed by
Nargis Akhter, she played a physician treating AIDS patients. In 2009, she partnered with a nonprofit organisation
TeachAids to voice educational animations about HIV/AIDS protection in English, Hindi, and Urdu. Javed Akhtar advised TeachAids for the animation's Urdu script. Azmi was also a member of the
National AIDS Commission (of India). Outside of the venue, actor
Dilip Kumar stood in protest with Hashmi's photograph. Azmi's statement echoed similar sentiments expressed by her peers, including Satyajit Ray,
Ravi Shankar,
Adoor Gopalakrishnan,
Utpal Dutt,
Krishna Sobti and
Rajendra Yadav, who engaged in "public displays of solidarity" in weeks following the murder.
H. K. L. Bhagat, the Minister of Information and Broadcasting at the time, was seen "refuting Azmi's allegations, but very few people in the audience appeared to take his word seriously." On 3 March 1989, during a Rajya Sabha session, Member of Parliament
Chimanbhai Mehta requested Bhagat to clarify if an instruction had been issued to Doordarshan after Azmi's statement to prohibit her from appearing on the Doordarshan screen. Bhagat denied the existence of such instruction. Azmi has continued to bring attention to Hashmi's murder over the years. In 2015, she and Akhtar attended the 26th Safdar Hashmi Memorial, organised by Sahmat, a Delhi-based activist and artist collective. On Hashmi's 31st Shahaadat Divas (Martyrdom Day) in 2020, the couple joined a gathering of artists and workers in
Sahibabad district of
Jhandapur, Uttar Pradesh, to celebrate his memory. The event marked the launch of Sudhanva Deshpande's
HallaBol: The Death and Life of Safdar Hashmi (2020) published by
LeftWord. Addressing the audience, Azmi recited lines from her father's and Akhtar's poetry. She also said that being in Jhandapur was "special" because it reminded her of Hashmi, and of her own childhood spent accompanying her father to
worker-rights meetings.
1989 March against communalism In 1989, along with
Swami Agnivesh and
Asghar Ali Engineer, Azmi undertook a four-day march for communal harmony from New Delhi to
Meerut. Among the social groups whose causes she has advocated are slum dwellers, displaced
Kashmiri Pandit migrants, and victims of the
earthquake at Latur (
Maharashtra, India). The
1993 Mumbai riots appalled her, and she emerged as a forceful critic of religious extremism. In 1995, she reflected on her life as an activist in an interview in Rungh. After the
11 September 2001 attacks, she opposed the advice of the grand mufti of
Jama Masjid calling upon the Muslims of India to join the people of
Afghanistan in their fight by retorting that the leader go there alone. Since 1989, she has been a member of the
National Integration Council headed by the
Prime Minister of India, and was nominated (in 1997) as a member of the
Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the
Indian parliament in 1997. == Artistry and legacy ==