Christopher Nolan’s much anticipated Oppenheimer released today. It focuses on the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, a renowned theoretical physicist known as “the father of the atomic bomb.” The movie delves into Oppenheimer’s involvement in the Manhattan Project, where he led the Los Alamos Laboratory and played a crucial role in the development of the first nuclear weapons during World War II.
During the crucial development, the physicist had also recollected the verses of Bhagavad Gita “I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad-Gita,” he said. “‘Now I become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.”
Now, Indian writer and mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik shared that Oppenheimer’s interpretation of Bhagavad Gita is wrong and said that the physicist was probably in a ‘dharam sankat’. The quote reads, “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One… I become death, the destroyer of worlds,” which he thought while he carried out the operation in New Mexico in 1945.
In an interview with Indian Express, Pattanaik revealed when he got to know that Oppenheimer had quoted from the Gita, he was surprised as he wasn’t familiar with the quote at all. He said, “I did some research on Oppenheimer, and I had never come across this line. I had never heard this line. Someone said it was chapter 11, verse 32, which really says ‘kaal-asmi’, which means ‘I am time, destroyer of the world’. So, his translation itself is wrong. It is not ‘I am death’. It is time, time is the destroyer of the world.”
He added, “For a scientist, if he has used this sentence… And I have seen that video also of his, where he keeps saying, ‘I am death, I am death’. It is very clearly, ‘I am time’. ‘Kaal’ means ‘time’. That is what he is saying, but of course, he gets excited because he’s seeing death and destruction at a massive scale, and he’s obviously seeking some kind of a spiritual background… He comes from a Judeo-Christian background, where God is known to punish people with floods and fire. This act of killing humanity with violence is very much a part of Biblical traditions; it’s not a part of Hindu traditions, not a part of Jain or Buddhist traditions… I think he was looking for some solace, and he found this verse very dramatic.”
Oppenheimer’s engagement with Hindu philosophy helped him make sense of his actions and the tremendous consequences of his involvement in the atomic bomb project. While he did not fully convert to Hinduism, his exploration of its teachings offered him a framework to understand the complexities and moral implications of his role in the development of nuclear weapons, as per the report.
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