Oppenheimer’s biographer explains physicist’s disputed interpretation of Bhagavad Gita: ‘He is trying to understand time and space’

Before the film’s release, writer Devdutt Pattanaik said in an interview with the Indian Express that the physicist’s interpretation of the Gita was flawed. “I did some research on Oppenheimer, and I had never come across 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 flawed. It is not ‘I am death’. It is time, time is the destroyer of the world,” he said.

Addressing this disputed interpretation, Bird said. “And that famous line that he used to describe what he thought when he saw the Trinity explosion — ‘I am death, destroyer of the world’ — some Sanskrit scholars, as I understand it, think that the more accurate translation would be ‘I am Time, destroyer of worlds’. He is a quantum physicist, so he is trying to understand time and space, and these are issues that the Gita sort of addresses on some level.”

Starring Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer has become a critical and commercial hit. The film has made over Rs 50 crore in India, and more than $180 million worldwide after just four days. A scene in which Oppenheimer says the ‘I am become Death’ line in the film has become controversial. A section of the audience took offence to Oppenheimer reciting the Gita during a sex scene, and have called for it to be removed from the film. Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur has reportedly demanded answers from the Central Board of Film Certification.