My fame doesn’t matter in my village: Nawazuddin Siddiqui

Actor details discrimination he faces because of caste divides

Bollywood actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui has opened up on the discrimination he faces in his village because of his caste, adding that his stardom and fame do not make any difference to those living there.

Siddiqui, who has been staying in his native village amid the nationwide lockdown in India, told NDTV in a recent interview, “In my own family, my grandmother was from a lower caste. Even today, they have not accepted us because of her.” He added, “The fact that I am famous doesn’t matter to them. It is deeply entrenched within them...it is in their veins. They consider it their pride.”

The Sacred Games actor went on to explain how the Sheikh Siddiquis are the upper caste and “They will not have anything to do with those they consider beneath them.”

Siddiqui continued to express his frustration, saying that it is “very difficult.” The Raat Akeli Hai actor’s comments come at a time when there is nationwide anger across the border over a young Dalit woman's death after she suffered horrific injuries from an assault by four upper-caste men. They were from her village in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh. "What is wrong is wrong. Our artiste community is also speaking out against what happened in Hathras. It is very important to speak out. It is a very unfortunate incident,” he said.

Earlier, Siddiqui had talked about the same on Twitter, disregarding how people may say there is no caste discrimination. “But if the same people travelled around, they would find a very different reality,” he said, referring to his own village folk.

The superstar can be currently seen playing a devious Dalit man in Sudhir Mishra’s film Serious Men. Based on Manu Joseph’s book of the same name, the film is about a wily slum dweller who cons the country into believing his 10-year-old son is a genius, only to realise that the only victim of his dangerous game is his son.

According to a Hindustan Times review, Serious Men is “as wickedly funny and as perversely enjoyable as Ayyan’s schemes are to watch. Serious Men would not have worked if there had not been a collective rage directed at the establishment. It’s a film that captures what it is like to live in India, circa 2020. It’s a time capsule that, like so many satirical films that were released in the post-Emergency era, captures the mood of the nation.”

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