While the film version of pink and sky-blue-hued Barbie is trumping Oppenheimer at the United States box office, it is Oppenheimer, the biographical thriller written and directed by Christopher Nolan, that is leading in India.
The reference to a phrase from the Bhagavad Gita, the revered Hindu text that J Robert Oppenheimer read compulsively to overcome his moral dilemma of becoming the instrument of so much death and destruction, may have something to do with the interest in India.
Both Robert Oppenheimer, a Jew, and Werner Heisenberg, a gentile, Lutheran Christian, set about building the world’s first nuclear bomb using their knowledge of quantum physics. Heisenberg was one of the youngest people to win the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1931. He had authored The Uncertainty Principle on the behaviour of sub-atomic particles in 1927. Robert Oppenheimer succeeded in building the atomic bomb at the head of a crack team of scientists tucked away in Los Alamos, New Mexico, on behalf of America and its allies. His motivation ostensibly was to end the war, in which he definitely succeeded, though the question remains whether the use of an atomic bomb, or two of them, was actually necessary to this end. The decision was President Harry S Truman’s, a former general himself, and not Oppenheimer’s, of course.
Heisenberg worked on behalf of Nazi Germany but was apparently a patriot and not a Nazi. He could not, or it is suggested — deliberately did not — build the Nazi bomb, even though the Nazi programme started first in 1938. Heisenberg and his team of scientists steered their work towards peaceful nuclear reactors to produce energy instead. It is also suggested that the resources needed, beyond 1200 tons of uranium supplied from occupied Belgium, could not be provided in 1942, when the go-ahead for the bomb was received, by a beleaguered Germany.
Werner Karl Heisenberg lived on after the war till 1976, when he died in Munich, regarded till the end as a brilliant man of science. A man who did not build the bomb out of conviction, though his theoretical science, in the very home of quantum physics, was ahead of all others.
This, while Julius Robert Oppenheimer, in America, who also began his mission to build the bomb in 1942, became a haunted man, a pariah as ‘the father of the atomic bomb’. This, after the extent of the devastation, wrought by his deadly invention became known. Oppenheimer was always suspected of Communist sympathies, and this combined with his post-war advocacy against nuclear proliferation, the development of the hydrogen bomb, the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union, and so on, became a basis for the American power establishment to turn their backs on him. They also threw him out of coveted university and organisational positions. Oppenheimer still continued to lecture, write and work in physics till the end. He died at the age of 62 in 1967, having been largely reinstated in the graces of the American government, by 1963. He remains, in his legacy, one of the most important figures of the 20th century.
Oppenheimer’s success led to the dropping of two nuclear bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan, by the Americans, within months of his proof-of-concept explosion in the Los Alamos desert named Trinity. This effectively led to the surrender of Imperial Japan. Nazi Germany also surrendered in 1945, thereby bringing World War II to a close.
It is seen, therefore, from this revived and current tale, how closely success and failure resemble each other.
India is now on a fated path towards the next general election, most likely between March and May 2024. The next eight to ten months will determine whether the Indian electorate gives a third consecutive term to Narendra Modi and the 38-member National Democratic Alliance (NDA) or will it choose the 27-party Opposition alliance newly named Indian National Democratic Inclusive Alliance (I.N.D.I.A.). The NDA currently has a comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha and a near majority in the Rajya Sabha too. The Opposition combine has approximately 144 seats in the Lok Sabha. Another 91 MPs who sit across the aisle from the NDA are neutral though they often vote along with the NDA on a case-to-case basis.
If the NDA is elected with a clear majority once again, for the third consecutive time, then the present policies will receive the boost of continuity. Their plus points principally are a robust, mostly majoritarian nationalism, attention to national defence, infrastructure development, manufacturing, trade, welfarism, and steady, all-round economic growth. Inclusiveness, as in ‘Sabka Vikas, Sabka Prayas’ is a stated objective, but while government programmes are not discriminatory, it remains to be seen how much of an electoral draw this stance engenders in the polls.
On the other side, the Opposition combine is a rickety construct of contradictions united mostly in its desire to oust the present dispensation. It is something of a do-or-die situation for this combine which accounts for one unrest or the other in these months up to the elections. There are foreign forces in alignment with this Opposition who do not relish the continuance of a strong Hindu nationalist government.
While largely made up of regional parties, some of whom such as the DMK, TMC, AAP, JDU/RJD are in power in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Delhi, Punjab and Bihar respectively, most are not. There are multiple contradictions. The CPI(M) is opposed to the TMC in West Bengal but is in power in Kerala. The Congress is in power in Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh and is a coalition partner in Jharkhand. This, could, of course, grow in the forthcoming assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh and elsewhere to be held before the general elections. How many seats this large combine gets in the new Lok Sabha, and from where, will determine the prime ministerial candidate. The Congress is clearly ahead of all others and will be, if all goes well, in pole position to nominate the future prime minister, should I.N.D.I.A. come within striking distance of a cobbled-together majority. It will work on a common minimum programme.
Past experience shows that unless there is an anchoring party with about 150 seats, such coalitions rapidly collapse in a matter of a few months. Besides, should the NDA be forced to sit on the Opposition benches, it will be hyperactive to try and bring the ruling coalition down at the earliest.
As for its economics and politics, it is certain to favour the minorities whose votes the Opposition combine is likely to get in large numbers, and reward them with populist SOPs. This will affect the momentum of the economy but make for happier voters. Much of the liberal socialist ethos pushed aside by the NDA will be quickly restored.
Democracy works on the will of the people and therefore, either continuity or change, including a change that seeks to go back a distance to what it considers first principles, will have to be accepted. The present wisdom suggests the Opposition has little chance of coming to power, but the upset of 2004 when India was ostensibly shining cannot be forgotten.
The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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