Devdutt Pattanaik Believes Oppenheimer's Interpretation Of Bhagavad Gita Is Wrong, Says 'He Was Looking For Some Solace'
Christopher Nolan's 'Oppenheimer', starring Cillian Murhpy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr, released in India On Friday.
New Delhi: Christopher Nolan's 'Oppenheimer' has released in theatres today. The film is an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel American Prometheus by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin, which is based on the life of nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, widely known as the 'Father of the Nuclear Bomb'. With the buzz that the film has created, interest in the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer has increased in India, especially after Cillian Murphy, who is playing the nuclear physicist, shared that he read Bhagavad Gita to prepare for the character and to get into its mind space considering Oppenheimer’s fascination with the Hindu Scripture.
Throughout his life, particularly during the nuclear tests, Oppenheimer found a strong source of inspiration in the Bhagavad Gita, to which he looked for many answers that helped shape his entire philosophy of life itself. After the Trinity Test on July 16, 1945, Oppenheimer had quoted from the Gita, "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendour of the Mighty One... I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."
However, writer Devdutt Pattanaik feels that his interpretation of the verse was wrong. In a conversation with Indian Express, writer Devdutt Pattanaik said that he did some research after he learnt about the quote and found that Oppenheimer’s translation of the quote is wrong. “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 told India Express.
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… I think he was looking for some solace, and he found this verse very dramatic.”
The film also stars Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr, Florence Pugh, Rami Malek, Benny Safdie among others.
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