Philosophy
Ambedkar’s warning about endogamy reveals why inter-caste love threatens caste at its core, and why cinema often flinches from showing that rupture. Masaan hints at possibility, but Dhadak 2 confronts the brutal machinery that protects caste boundaries with violence.
When Cinema Reimagines Endings
If courts create new legal mythologies, cinema creates new imaginative ones. But before examining what Hindi cinema has attempted, we need Ambedkar’s insight: caste doesn’t survive through belief alone; it survives through endogamy.
In his 1916 paper “Castes in India,” Ambedkar argued that caste is maintained primarily through the prohibition of intermarriage. “Caste is an enclosed class,” and endogamy is the enclosure mechanism. You can change minds about caste ideology, but as long as marriage remains within caste boundaries, the system reproduces itself generation after generation. This is why inter-caste marriage isn’t just a personal choice, it’s a structural challenge to caste itself. Every such marriage disrupts the “purity” of bloodlines, caste depends on, threatens property consolidation within caste groups, and creates kinship networks that cross sacred boundaries. This is why they provoke violence: they threaten the very mechanism through which caste perpetuates itself.
Masaan (2015), directed by Neeraj Ghaywan, follows Deepak Chaudhary (Vicky Kaushal), a young Dalit man who works at Varanasi’s cremation ghats. It’s a job marking his caste location unmistakably. He falls in love with Shaalu Gupta, an upper-caste girl from his coaching centre. The film visualises exactly what Ambedkar described: the psychological weight of knowing your caste location makes you unacceptable. Deepak and Shaalu’s relationship develops naturally as they study and dream together. But Deepak carries anxiety throughout: he knows what he is, where he works and what that means for any future together. The film shows caste operating not through overt violence but through internalised impossibility; not just external prohibition, but endogamy so naturalised that crossing it feels unthinkable. Then Shaalu dies in a sudden accident, not caste violence, but a tragic collision. The film follows Deepak’s grief, his continued work at the ghats, and his slow healing. The final scene shows him scattering her ashes, then tentatively connecting with Devi (Richa Chadha), the other protagonist, carrying her own losses.
Masaan refuses the mythology that inter-caste love must end in honour killing. But here’s its limitation through the Ambedkarite lens: the relationship never actually challenges endogamy because Shaalu dies before marriage and before families confront boundary-crossing, before caste’s structural mechanism is disrupted.
Dhadak 2 (2025), directed by Shazia Iqbal, takes the approach Ambedkar would recognise as more structurally honest. It shows what happens when endogamy is actually threatened. Neelesh “Neel” Ahirwar (Siddhant Chaturvedi), a Dalit law student admitted through reservation, meets Vidhi Bharadwaj (Triptii Dimri), an upper-caste classmate, and they fall in love. Unlike Masaan’s quiet development, Dhadak 2 shows immediately what Ambedkar understood: when inter-caste intimacy becomes visible, violence follows. Not because individuals are ruthless, but because the entire caste system depends on preventing this boundary-crossing. Neel faces systematic humiliation designed to remind him of his place. When the relationship persists, Vidhi’s family hires a contract killer. This isn’t exceptional cruelty; it’s the ordinary enforcement mechanism of endogamy. The film literalises Ambedkar’s argument: caste is maintained through the prohibition of intermarriage, and that prohibition is maintained through violence or its threat. “Honour killing” is just the term for endogamy’s enforcement mechanism when it becomes spectacular. Significantly, Neel survives, and the couple stays together. The film refuses tragic inevitability. This is crucial from an Ambedkarite perspective, showing the boundary can actually be crossed, endogamy actually challenged, the caste’s reproduction mechanism disrupted even when it deploys lethal violence.
But the film also reveals why such disruption is rare: the cost is enormous. Neel nearly dies. The violence is systematic, relentless and murderous, so that not many can survive. The film itself faced significant censorship; the CBFC demanded 16 cuts, including the removal of a reference to “Thakur ka Kuan,” a poem by Om Prakash Valmiki about caste-based denial of water access. Even naming caste oppression remains too dangerous. This reveals Ambedkar’s insight: the system protects itself not just through violence against boundary-crossers, but also by preventing the articulation of how it works.
What would Ambedkar make of these films? He’d appreciate making caste visible, but notes crucial limitations. Masaan leaves the boundary uncrossed, allowing endogamy to survive while audiences enjoy the pathos of impossible love. Dhadak 2 shows crossing, but makes it so exceptional and violent that it reinforces the difficulty.
What’s missing is what Ambedkar called for: normalisation. Can we imagine a film where inter-caste marriage happens in the first act, and the rest is about ordinary life together? Can we imagine families where boundary-crossing is simply history, neither tragedy nor triumph? Perhaps our difficulty imagining such cinema reveals how deeply film participates in maintaining endogamy even while appearing to critique caste.