When Oppenheimer’s brother rejected rumours that he ‘got very religiously involved’ in the Bhagavad Gita: ‘Not true at all’

Oppenheimer's love for Sanskrit, Hinduism and the Bhagavad Gita is well documented, but his brother made it clear that this was more of an intellectual exercise.

Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer.

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Even as a section of the society outrages about the context in which a reference to the Bhagavad Gita was made in director Christopher Nolan’s recently released film Oppenheimer, the American theoretical physicist’s fascination with Hinduism continues to interest general audiences. Oppenheimer, who is best known as the ‘father of the atomic bomb’, was well-versed in the Bhagavad Gita, and also studied Sanskrit during his time at Berkeley, mainly in order to read the sacred text in its original form.

Immediately after he successfully spearheaded the Trinity test of 1945, which resulted in the creation of the world’s first atomic bombs, Oppenheimer claimed to have thought of a line from the Gita: ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’

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

In the Oscar-nominated 1981 documentary The Day After Trinity, Frank Oppenheimer speaks about his brother’s love for the Gita. “At Berkeley, he’d read the Bhagavad Gita and learned Sanskrit, and was really taken by the charm and the general wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita. Some people seemed to think that he got very religiously involved in it, but that’s not true at all,” he said.

It was Frank who encouraged his brother’s love for Eastern philosophy. In a letter that Oppenheimer sent to Frank in 1933, he wrote, “I have been reading the Bhagavad Gita with Ryder and two Sanskritists.” A year later, in another letter to Frank, Oppenheimer wrote, “Only a very long letter can make up for my great silence, and for the many sweet things for which I have to thank you, letters and benevolences stretching now over many months. Benevolences starting with the precious Meghaduta, and rather too learned Veda… The Meghaduta I read with Ryder, with great delight, some ease, and great enchantment; the Veda lies on my shelf, a reproach to my indolence.”

Oppenheimer’s interest in the arts was addressed in the documentary. His old friend, Haakon Chevalier, said, “On one of his many trips to the east, on a train, he had taken three volumes of Das Kapital, and he had read them all in the original on his way to New York. In German, yes. And shortly after, he bought the complete works of Lenin, and read those.” The physicist Hans Bethe, who worked with Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project, said about him, “He was a tremendous intellect. I don’t believe I have known another person who was quite so quick in comprehending both scientific and general knowledge.”

In Nolan’s film, Cillian Murphy plays Oppenheimer, Dylan Arnold plays Frank, Jefferson Hall plays Chevalier, and Gustaf Skarsgård appears as Bethe. The movie has been a critical and commercial hit, having grossed more than $220 million worldwide, of which over Rs 67 crore has come from India.

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