Dhadak 2 review: Bollywood love story sanitises real-live horrors of caste violence

The National

4 days ago

Article 15 of the Indian Constitution minces no words with its prohibition of discrimination 'against any citizen on grounds only of religion, caste, sex, place of birth, or any of them.'
Drafted in 1948, a year after India's independence, it is a marked condemnation of the country's deeply-entrenched caste-based hegemony and gender-based violence.
Seventy seven years have passed since, but India and the world continue to witness the horrors of honour killings and violence borne out of caste-based discrimination, among countless other crimes committed in the name of protecting the pride of a nebulous title.
Produced by Karan Johar under his studio Dharma Productions, Dhadak 2 is a romantic drama that makes a valiant attempt to address caste-based prejudice. It stars Siddhant Chaturvedi and Triptii Dimri as star-crossed lovers.
Chaturvedi plays Neelesh, a man who is from a lower caste and dreams of becoming a lawyer. Sparks fly when a meet-cute between him and Vidhi – she is a Brahmin, the most elite caste in the social class – turns into a freewheeling romance. Institutional oppression, unfortunately, has other plans for the pair, which forms the crux of this film.
The underlying social message Dhadak 2 is trying to sell has played out on screen in countless other, arguably better films.
From acclaimed filmmaker Bimal Roy's 1959 drama, Sujata, to more modern independent stories such as Dibakar Banerjee's Love Sex Aur Dhokha (2011) and Anubhav Sinha's Article 15 (2019), the list is endless.
The problem here is that director Shazia Iqbal and co-writer Rahul Badwelkar sanitise the grim reality of institutional horrors in favour of a schmaltzy melodrama like an early-2010s Bollywood romcom.
Cinematographer Sylvester Fonseca's picture-perfect framing with multiple sun-kissed shots doesn't help either. What emerges is something between glossy romance, harrowing drama and a friendly neighbourhood Indian daily soap opera.
It isn't all bad though. Chaturvedi and Dimri are incredible leading performers. They are backed by a stack of phenomenal supporting actors, including Vipin Sharma, Zakir Hussain (from Prime Video series Farzi), and Harish Khanna (from the acclaimed film 12th Fail).
They all bring their A-game to their respective roles. But the leads' charms does not fit with the grounded nature of their characters.
This isn't exactly on them. The movie insists on romanticising the narrative too much. So much so that it becomes easy to forget what the intent really is – an unfortunate problem that was also a part of its previous instalment, Dhadak (2018). In terms of plot, the two movies share nothing apart from their sociopolitical message.
The film is competent enough. But walking out of the cinema brings to mind the fate of nine-year-old Indra Meghwal, who was beaten to death in Rajasthan in 2022 for touching a pot of water used by the upper caste. It is a reminder of the 19-year-old woman in Uttar Pradesh who was brutally assaulted and murdered by four men in the name of caste.
Dhadak 2 's style undermines both its story and the systemic oppression of people of lower castes.