My article on the movie Oppenheimer and the Gita published in the Sunday Guardian Mumbai, 30 July 2023
Oppenheimer wouldn’t have liked Nolan’s treatment of Gita.
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By Nitin Mehta
July 30, 2023
He would have been deeply disturbed by the sex scene and the disrespect shown to the Bhagavad Gita.
The blockbuster Oppenheimer movie by Christopher Nolan, shows the physicist reciting a sloka, a verse from the Bhagavad Gita while having sex. The hurt felt by millions of Hindus all over the world cannot be overstated. The Bhagavad Gita is the Bible of Hindus. They take the oath on it. However writing in the Times Amrita Dhillon claimed that it were the India’s Hindu hardliners who were furious. According to Soutik Biswas of the BBC some right-wing Hindus were objecting to the sex scene in Oppenheimer. It is as if we are living in a surreal world where Hindu Gods and scriptures are portrayed in a grossly negative way and when Hindus object they are called militant, hardliners and intolerant. J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), known as “the father of the atomic bomb”, had great respect for the Bhagavad Gita. He said: “The Bhagavad Gita is the most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue.” He added that “access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege of this century”. He became familiar with the notions of karma, destiny and earthly duty from the Bhagavad Gita.
He would have been deeply disturbed by the sex scene and the disrespect shown to the Bhagavad Gita. Oppenheimer also had great admiration for the Sanskrit language. His favourite Sanskrit text was Meghduta by Kalidas. He had named his Chrysler car, Garuda after the Garuda of the Ramayana.
Oppenheimer was not the only American to admire the Bhagavad Gita. Philosopher Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) said, “In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous philosophy of the Bhagavad and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seems puny and trivial.” Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), transcendentalist, essayist and poet said, “I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad Gita. It was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed the same questions which exercise us.” The German linguist William von Humboldt (1767-1846) began to learn Sanskrit in 1821. Regarding the Bhagavad Gita he wrote to his friend Friedrich von Gentz and said, “I read the Indian poem for the first time and I felt a sense of overwhelming gratitude to God for having let me live to be acquainted with this work. It must be the most profound and sublime thing to be found in the world.”
The Oppenheimer movie comes soon after the Indian film Adipurush, in which the whole of Ramayana is distorted and revered figures like Lord Rama and Lord Hanuman treated with scant respect. A lot of Bollywood films recently have portrayed Hindu religion and culture with deeply offensive caricatures. Drawings of Lord Ganesh are quite often shown on slippers or mats. Hindu scriptures are also invariably called mythologies. In other words, they are myths not real history. Unfortunately, Indians too use the same term. You never hear this term used for others religions.
Artist M.F. Hussain painted Hindu Gods and Goddesses in the nude. When asked why he did not make similar nude drawings from other faiths he replied they were not as tolerant as Hindus. Therein lies the crux of the dilemma. Hindus Gods get targeted because Hindus have the virtue of being tolerant. But this very tolerance of Hindus has been weaponized by the media and by many other organisations who have their own nefarious agendas.
Nitin Mehta, www.nitinmehta.co.uk
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