Dhadak's Surprising Legacy: How a 'Glossy Remake' Tackled Caste Violence

Five years after its release, the 2018 film Dhadak is being reevaluated for its surprising impact. When the film first hit theaters, it was dismissed as a "glossy remake" of the 2016 Marathi hit Sairat. However, Dhadak quietly proved to be ahead of its time, daring to showcase the brutal realities of caste-based violence and honor killings within the framework of a mainstream Bollywood romance.

Dhadak transported the story of Sairat, about a lower-caste boy and an upper-caste girl whose tender love is shattered by casteism, to the picturesque setting of Udaipur. While the film tiptoed around the word "caste," its unflinching ending, which depicted the brutal murder of the young protagonists, made it a "Trojan horse" that brought these issues to a wider multiplex audience.

Dhadak's decision to not give its love story a happy ending sparked conversations about whether caste violence "still happens" in modern India. The film introduced these realities to viewers who may have never otherwise watched a film on the topic, quietly changing the cultural conversation.

As Dhadak 2 promises to explore themes of "identity, power and the emotional price of love," the original film's legacy is being reevaluated. While it may not have been as cinematic urgent as Sairat, Dhadak cracked open a space in Bollywood where caste-based stories could exist in mainstream cinema, paving the way for more impactful stories to come.