CBFC clears Dhadak 2 after 16 cuts, including altered anti-caste references

Scenes featuring caste-based discrimination like slurs and violence in the film Dhadak 2 were removed or modified by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), clearing the way for the film’s release months after its original release date. The title, starring Triptii Dimri and Siddhant Chaturvedi is a remake of the Tamil anti-caste film Pariyerum Perumal, which was released in 2018 with four cuts, compared to the sixteen modifications Dhadak 2 has had to undergo. The Hindu reviewed the certificates issued to both films.

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The film has been rated ‘U/A 16+’, the second highest maturity classification below ‘A’. The film was originally supposed to release in November 2024, but its release was later postponed to March, a date it also missed.

One dialogue in Hindi — “3,000 years of backlog will not be cleared in just 70 years.” — was changed to, “The backlog of age-old discrimination will not be cleared in just 70 years.” A dialogue featuring what appears to be a reference to an analogy by the Bahujan Samaj Party’s founder Kanshi Ram was reworked.

That analogy draws a parallel between the nib of a pen (representing upper castes) and the rest of it. Ram would frequently bring this analogy up to advocate for a change in the social order. The dialogue in the film, “Nilesh ye kalam dekh rahe ho…., Raaj kar rahe hain” (the CBFC did not reproduce the full dialogue, which translates to, “Nilesh [the protagonist], you see this pen … [they] are ruling.”), was replaced with, “Yeh chota sa dhakkan puri qalam ka thoda sa hissa hai aur baki ke hai hum phir bhi hamare sir per baithe hua hai kyu.” 

The new dialogue translates to: “This small lid is a small part of the whole pen, but it sits on our heads. Why?” A five second shot of someone urinating on Nilesh was censored. The use of caste names as slurs — namely “chamar” and “bhangi” — have been muted and replaced with “junglee,” respectively. 

One of the cuts says that the “Blue colour of the dog was removed”. The original film features a mystical sequence where a brutally killed dog’s blue-coloured spirit rescues the protagonist. In another scene, sixteen seconds of a three minute scene featuring the “humiliation of Nilesh’s father” was cut. A line saying, “Dharam ka kaam hai,” (“this is religious work”), was replaced with “Punya ka kaam hai” (“this is [work toward] a good deed”). 

One description of a cut indicates a replacement involving the poem Thakur ka Kuan (the Thakur’s well), written by Om Prakash Valmiki. It is unclear if this poem was replaced, or if this poem replaced a different one. Broadly, the poem explores upper caste control of resources, and lower caste alienation from them. Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament Manoj Jha read the poem in Parliament in 2023. 

One more dialogue, reproduced only partially by the CBFC as “Savarnon ke sadak … humein jala dete the.” (“The savarana’s street(s) … they would burn us [alive]”), was replaced with “Na Sadke hamari thin a zameen hamari thin a paani hamar tha yaha tak ki zindagi bhi hamari nahi thi marne ki naubat aayi to shaher aagaya,” translating to “Neither were the streets ours, nor was the land, nor the water, nor even the life; I was on the verge of death, so I came to the city.”

A 20 second disclaimer before the film was replaced with a one minute 51 second version, read out loud. The CBFC did not list the content of either the original disclaimer or the new one. One instance of a swear word was muted, and a scene featuring violence against a woman was replaced with a “black screen”. 

In one song, a doha by Tulsidas was replaced. The doha is translated by the author Ajai Kumar Chhawchharia as, “On the banks of a river in Chitrakoot, there is a crowd of saints and holy people. Tulsidas is rubbing sandalwood to make a paste, and Raghubir (Lord Ram) uses this paste to make the mark of the Tilak on their foreheads.”

The replacement is a couplet which roughly translates to, “Shoot arrows that may seem small but inflict great damage when they hit.” The couplet resembles a verse describing the 17th century poet Bihari’s work, but its first line is different.