Namita Thapar faces abuse after praising namaz for wellness benefits

Namita Thapar’s wellness reel about namaz turned into a case study in selective outrage. The Shark Tank India judge said she was abused for nearly three weeks after describing Islamic prayer as a full-body practice, even as her earlier yoga and Surya Namaskar posts passed without the same firestorm.

Thapar posted the video toward the end of March 2026, framing namaz as more than a religious ritual. She said the practice can support digestion, flexibility, mental well-being and calm, and pointed specifically to the Vajrasana posture as something that can help digestion and create a pause in a busy day. The reaction online was harsh enough that she later said trolls had also dragged her mother into the abuse.

On April 20, 2026, Thapar answered back in a video recorded during her morning commute at about 7 a.m., after she stopped her car mid-journey to address the harassment. She said her comments came from her position as a healthcare professional and were about wellness, not religious promotion. She also said she had previously posted about yoga and Surya Namaskar without similar outrage, a comparison that sharpened the argument around which mindfulness-adjacent practices are treated as acceptable in public discourse.

Thapar called the backlash “selective outrage” and said the “R” in religion should stand for respect, especially toward women. In the same response, she invoked karma and said, “God is watching.” The message landed as both a defense of her own post and a broader complaint about the way online mobs police prayer-based content far more aggressively than yoga-based wellness language.

The controversy also spilled into the market. Emcure Pharmaceuticals shares fell 2.64% on April 20, 2026, to Rs 1,628, even as the broader market remained positive, with the stock move linked to reputational concern around the viral clip.

For Thapar, the episode was another turn in a long cycle of public scrutiny. A March 2024 reel on perimenopause had already drawn wide attention, and the latest backlash showed how quickly a meditation-adjacent or body-based practice can be accepted when it is framed as yoga, then contested when it is attached to prayer.