Siddharth is no longer the Rang De Basanti boy. Operation Safed Sagar proves it

For many Hindi film viewers, Siddharth still carries the image of the young, spirited college student from Rang De Basanti. Nearly two decades after the 2006 film, that association has remained surprisingly strong. But Operation Safed Sagar gives the actor a chance to be seen differently. This time he is a mature performer at the centre of a story rooted in the Indian Air Force and the Kargil War.In Rang De Basanti, Siddharth played Karan Singhania, the quiet one in the group. The boy, who had feelings for Soha Ali Khan's character but never said a word, stepped back the moment his friend stepped forward. He was watchful, restrained, someone you rooted for even in the background. Hindi audiences fell for him, and then largely watched him from a distance as his career took him south.That was 2006. Nearly twenty years later, Operation Safed Sagar has brought him back to the Hindi spotlight and the person Hindi audiences are meeting this time around is almost unrecognisable from the one they last saw.There is also an interesting connection between Rang De Basanti and Operation Safed Sagar. In the 2006 film, Karan Singhania and his friends are pushed to act after their friend, a young Air Force pilot, is killed when his MiG-21 malfunctions. The crash sets the entire story in motion. In Operation Safed Sagar, Siddharth plays Squadron Leader Ajay Ahuja, a real IAF officer whose MiG-21 is shot down by a stinger missile during the Kargil War while he is searching for a fellow pilot whose aircraft has developed technical problems.Twenty years ago, a MiG-21 crash changed everything for Karan Singhania. In Operation Safed Sagar, a MiG-21 is how Ajay Ahuja's story ends. The young rebel who once sought justice for his fallen friend is now playing an officer whose story ends in sacrifice. It is a striking journey for an actor, even if many Hindi film viewers may not have seen all the steps in between.What Hindi audiences missedHere is the thing about Siddharth: he never stopped working. He never disappeared. Hindi audiences simply stopped paying attention.Over the years, he built an entirely different career in Tamil cinema. In recent years, his roles involved creative risks and roles that weren't safe. In Chithha (2023), he took on one of the most emotionally demanding roles of his career, dealing with subject matter that required him to leave behind every trace of the boy-next-door persona that had made him famous. It was a performance that earned him respect.His 2025 film 3BHK continued that shift. The film focussed on the everyday struggles and aspirations of a middle-class family, giving him another opportunity to work within a more realistic space.For audiences who followed his Tamil work, Operation Safed Sagar is not a comeback. It is simply the next chapter of a career that has been evolving for two decades. For Hindi audiences, however, it feels like a rediscovery.The Siddharth you meet in Operation Safed SagarThe series opens with the scene of Ahuja's plane being struck by a surface-to-air missile. It is a jolt, and it is Siddharth's face you are watching as it happens. Then the story steps back, months earlier, to when Ahuja arrives in Bhatinda to work alongside his former colleague Wing Commander BS Dhanoa (Jimmy Shergill), training a group of young pilots who are flying a MiG-21 for the first time.This is not the Karan Singhania of Rang De Basanti. There is no brooding, no longing for unrequited love, no youthful restlessness. Instead, he plays something harder to portray, the calm of a man who has accepted the life he has chosen. He apologises to his wife for another move, for the disruption, for the uncertainty that comes with this job. He tells his senior that every successful landing feels like a birthday. He mentors without lecturing. He leads without making speeches about it.Siddharth is the heart of the series, and he earns that position not through big moments but through the accumulation of small, human ones. From the first scene, he makes you think about him and that feeling does not leave you.Squadron Leader Ajay Ahuja was posthumously awarded the Vir Chakra for his courage during the Kargil War. He was a real person and the series carries that responsibility carefully and Siddharth does it too.What is interesting is what the role asks of him compared to what made him popular. Rang De Basanti asked for passion and rebellion, while Operation Safed Sagar asks for something less visible, but also more difficult. Here he is needed to show the courage of a man who knows exactly what he has signed up for and has made his peace with it.That shift, from the young rebel to the composed, selfless officer, is not just a character arc, but it is 20 years of an actor's life showing up on screen.Hindi audiences are only now getting to see it. Better late, as they say, than never.Directed by Oni Sen, Operation Safed Sagar streams on Netflix.- EndsPublished By: shweta keshriPublished On: Aug 12, 2026 16:25 IST