Tennis icon Sania Mirza broke down during a TV interview on Friday when asked about her view on the controversy over her appointment as the brand ambassador of Telangana.
“It was extremely hurtful for me. I think it is unfair that I have to keep…or we have to keep justifying our ‘Indianness’, keep asserting our ‘Indianness’ time and again,” she told NDTV’s Barkha Dutt.
“I don’t know whether it has something to do with my gender (but) after playing for the country for as many years, after saying time and again that I have an Indian passport, after winning medals at the Commonwealth Games, after I got married…I don’t understand why time and again I have to keep justifying I am an Indian,” she said.
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“If someone is going to question my roots, my family’s roots and question my ‘Indianness’, I am not going to let that happen,” she said.
She said it didn't even cross her mind where her husband (Pakistan cricketer Shoaib Malik) was from when they met.
At this point she broke down. “It’s just very upsetting,” Ms. Mirza said.
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