In the scene in question, the physicist Oppenheimer reads an extract from the Bhagavad-Gita, a poem written in Sanskrit and one of the fundamental texts of Hinduism.
A sex scene from the hit movie Oppenheimer, in which a passage from the Bhagavad-Gita, one of the fundamental texts of Hinduism, is quoted, angers Hindus in India with demands that it be cut. Human rights activists in India are concerned about growing religious intolerance in the world’s most populous country since Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014.
A fundamental text of Hinduism
The highly anticipated film hit screens in India on Friday. It traces the life of Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), an American physicist who helped bring the world into a new era: that of nuclear energy.
In a scene showing Oppenheimer, played by Irishman Cilian Murphy, with his lover Jean Tatlock, played by Florence Pugh, she opens a copy of the Bhagavad-Gita and asks the scientist to read a passage from it. He then reads these words:now I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds”the phrase that came to Oppenheimer’s mind, according to his memories, during the first American test of nuclear weapons on July 16, 1945 in the desert of New Mexico, marking the beginning of the nuclear age.
“A war against the Hindu community”
Written in Sanskrit between the 2nd and 5th centuries BC, the poem is one of the fundamental texts of Hinduism. “This is a direct attack on the religious beliefs of a billion tolerant Hindus”wrote Uday Mahurkar, a senior official in the government’s Central Information Committee, in a letter to Christopher Nolan. “It amounts to launching a war against the Hindu community”, he adds in his missive, of which he posted a copy on Twitter, asking the director to delete the scene. On the social network flourished hashtags like #BoycottOppenheimer or #RespectHinduCulture.
For the conservative Hindu organization Vishwa Hindu Parishad, which also called for the scene to be cut, the film constitutes an attempt to “tackle” Hindu society. “The authors should apologize to the Hindu community around the world whose feelings have been seriously hurt”, spokesman Vinod Bansal told AFP. In India, Hinduism is in the majority alongside significant religious minorities, notably Muslims.