 "Was Oppenheimer, the maker of the atomic bomb, inspired from Bhagavad Gita?")
Being described as “intense” and a “masterpiece” by many viewers, the Christopher Nolan-directed Oppenheimer is already making waves worldwide. The movie is based on the 2005 biography 'American Prometheus' by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, about J. Robert Oppenheimer, a theoretical physicist who developed the first nuclear weapons on the Manhattan Project.
In the Oppenheimer movie, Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr played key roles and Oppenheimer has an interesting connection with Bhagavad Gita, the main holy book in Hinduism.
Was Oppenheimer inspired by Bhagavad Gita?
The physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, was highly inspired by the Bhagavad Gita's lessons, and he used to keep a copy of Gita near the bedside.
The America-born theoretical physicist believed that Gita is the “most beautiful philosophical song” existing in any known tongue. He even listed Gita among the ten books that most shaped his life.
In 1933, he even learnt Sanskrit weekly from a Sanskrit professor to read the original text.
Oppenheimer and the Atom Bomb
Oppenheimer was appointed to lead the Manhattan Project as a great war was underway against the Nazis.
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The Professor of History, James A Hijiya, wrote in his book "The Gita of J. Robert Oppenheimer", "Krishna's message to Arjuna is clear: you must fight. To Oppenheimer, the message would have seemed equally clear. If it was proper for Arjuna to kill his own friends and relatives in a squabble over the inheritance of a kingdom, then how could it be wrong for Oppenheimer to build a weapon to kill Germans and Japanese whose governments were trying to conquer the world."
Oppenheimer knew that they needed the atomic bomb to defeat the Nazis, but at the same time, he also realised that the bomb is a dangerous weapon that could destroy humanity.
On July 16, 1945, the atomic bomb was successfully tested and it was named as Trinity Test.
Decades ago, Oppenheimer had quoted the Hindu scripture in one of his interviews with Newsweek, where he recalled the first nuclear test and stated, “I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
Many aspects of Oppenheimer’s story are compelling: Christopher Nolan
Christopher Nolan, the director of Oppenheimer, in his interview with Reuters, explained that the movie is the most dramatic and many of its aspects are so compelling. Nolan says that he wants his audience to be there in that one room where the most horrifying decisions were made.
The movie will be released worldwide on July 21.