'Dhadak 2' Writer And Director Break Down Their Choices and Vision: A Reinterpretation or a Misinterpretation of 'Pariyerum Perumal'?

Dhadak 2, written by Rahul Badwelkar and Shazia Iqbal, and the directorial debut of Iqbal, is a powerful remake of Mari Selvaraj’s Pariyerum Perumal (2018). It is, also, a re-imagination of that film, and one could even argue, a feminist re-centering of the original film’s gaze.

Set in a nameless Hindi-belt town, the film traces the path of Neelesh (Siddhant Chaturvedi), a sincere but largely apolitical Dalit law student, which gets tangled with that of his classmate, Vidhi (Triptii Dimri), an upper-caste woman, who is both curious in thought and steadfast in action. Neelesh’s arc is towards activism as succour, while Vidhi’s is a realisation of how violent her own family is, guilty of threatening, beating up, urinating on, and even attempting to murder Neelesh for his audacity to love Vidhi.

Iqbal and Badwelkar spent three and a half years on the film, from writing to shooting, including a frustrating five-month period where the film was stuck with the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), which forced them to return to the editing table. Until the last minute the film was being re-edited, including a quote by Jiddu Krishnamurti that had to be removed from the film’s epigraph because the makers did not secure the permission.

One of the provocations of Dhadak 2 is Vidhi’s character, which is stronger, and armed with its own arc—one missing in the original. This re-interpretation can also be seen as a re-writing, because the original kept her character ignorant of her family’s violence—and so it did not need to deal with her anguished reaction to their violence.

Iqbal and Badwelkar also have a more focused perspective—the social impact of this film brimmed the surface. Lines strewn casually behind the back of the main character in the original become a sharpened weapon of words directed at him in this film—“Marne aur ladne mein se ek ko chunna ho, toh ladna” (If you must choose between fighting and dying, then fight.)

A still from 'Dhadak 2'

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter India, both Iqbal and Badwelkar discuss the choices they made in adapting the film.

Excerpts from a conversation:

How are you feeling right now? While the film has been applauded by critics, commercially it hasn’t quite landed.

Shazia Iqbal: Since we made the film with a mainstream language and grammar, the idea was that it would reach not just the metro cities but the interior of the country. Perhaps it is bad timing, with Saiyaara, Son of Sardaar 2, Kingdom and Mahavatar Narasimha landing on our release window and even War 2 coming. We couldn’t even get many screens. Despite being a Dharma production, it is a small film... not a Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani.  

Tell me about the decision to not root your film in a particular city, unlike the original — which was rooted not just in a particular village and city and plucked from the director’s life — but also set in a specific milieu in 2005.

SI: The name of the place was taken out of the film. But we began the film with the Raja Bhoj Statue, so those in Bhopal would know which city it is—thankfully, that was not asked to be taken out. Also, just to be clear, it is not because it is a Dharma film that we have set it in a city. That is what some of the trolls have been saying. 

Rahul Badwelkar: We wanted to say casteism is everywhere, not just in rural areas. Our film is very much a 2025 film, with phones and the mention of reels, etc. That way we are also saying that casteism is a very present problem. 

Tell me about this mainstream grammar. One of the things you have done is further flesh out the character of the college activist, Shekhar (Priyank Tiwari). In one of the most powerful moments, he even breaks the fourth wall.

SI: Both Rahul and I realised that this movie has a huge potential of also being a college film. We are huge fans of Rang De Basanti, which said so much about rebellion and breaking the system as a college film. So that became an early reference. 

RB: College is where younger people are stepping out into the world.

SI: Law colleges particularly have a lot of debates. Since the film is set in a law college, why not use it as an opportunity to have a lot of conversations? Dalit politics has rarely been spoken of in mainstream cinema and we saw this as an opportunity. If I have to be honest, we would have completely turned it into a college film, where Shekhar and Neelesh’s dynamic becomes the main film. In fact, through Shekhar, we were able to put our voice in the film. We were able to talk about reservation, for example.

RB: It also made Neelesh’s fight bigger. It is no longer just a personal problem. Also, it is an ode to Rohith Vemula. 

Does community and God leave when you bring in activism? All the local customs, sense of God, that is there in the original are not here in this film. 

SI: There are restrictions when doing a mainstream film. It is clear that Neelesh is Buddhist in the film. It opens with a shot of Buddha, which I thought would get chopped by the CBFC. 

I loved the funeral scene in the original film, but we know we are doing a mainstream film, and the big change we did is make this film a full-fledged love story—there is reciprocation of love from Neelesh here, unlike the original film where he didn’t feel like he had a right to fall in love with the girl. That made his struggle more interesting. We had to sacrifice some detailing to incorporate this larger arc.

Tell me about staging violence. There is a black-out when a male cop slaps a Dalit woman. 

RB: There was a slap, but the CBFC’s issue was that we were showing a six-foot-tall upper caste man slap a timid Dalit woman. They didn’t want us to show that violence. It was censored. But they let us keep the sound of the slap. So, in the edit, we decided to cut to black, and retain the same number of frames. 

SI: It ended up being more powerful. 

A still from 'Dhadak 2'

You have mentioned in interviews that in the original, Jo’s character felt like a “prop”, and so you wanted to make her stronger. But this also made the film far angrier than the original—the climax with the public spectacle and Vidhi’s primal howl. It made the film’s conclusion more satisfying and cinematic, while the original’s conclusion was knottier, quieter, more unresolved, because it saw Jo’s character as naive and let her remain that way. I wondered, was this a re-interpretation or misinterpretation of the original? Can you tell me about how you negotiated this? 

SI: The first time I saw Pariyerum Perumal and when I met Karan Johar, both of us felt her character did not feel right. 

RB: In the chai scene in the end, she is just serving these men tea. 

SI: Both these men were negotiating what is correct and not correct, without including the woman in the conversation. I know people who have loved that scene, and it has some beauty. But it is a very “male gaze” scene and it did not sit right with me. She is the bridge connecting these two worlds—and she is not involved in it? It honestly made me a bit angry. That character did not work for me, Rahul or Karan —who told me we don’t want our female protagonists to hang around the boy. You cannot have a conversation on caste or religion without bringing in gender. 

But that doesn’t mean we make her a protesting krantikari. She also has a coming of age, like Neelesh. It is not like she exists for Neelesh’s character arc. We didn’t want to undo Mari’s film.

RB: And that is why the love story becomes more important. 

Tell me about that scream—an unsettling and powerful narrative choice. 

SI: The monologue is a very Hindi cinema trope where a hero gathers at the end and talks of social injustice as a public spectacle. We wanted that. We did not want it to be a private conversation between him and Vidhi’s father. Neelesh had earned that moment; a person finding his voice needs to express himself at the end.

It was also a love story. But what could she, a Savarna woman, say after his monologue? That scream was not in the screenplay. While shooting, Rahul suggested, what if she screams so the gun-toting stops. 

RB: Behron ko sunane ke liye, chillana padhta hai. (To make the deaf hear, you must scream.)