‘Oppenheimer,’ the Bhagavad-Gita and India’s Outrage

The debate about “Oppenheimer” has veered between fascination for a past when men wore linen suits to build a bomb and fear for a future in which the world is nuked to a crisp. The debate in the West—and, notably, Japan—has been civilized for our bad-tempered times, with historians, philosophers and “fact checkers” chewing intently on the film’s abundant fodder. Only in India has the movie sparked outraged dissent, with calls by officials from its Hindu nationalist government for it to be censored.

Christopher Nolan’s film depicts J. Robert Oppenheimer’s role in making the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Oppenheimer, a theoretical physicist, was director of the Manhattan Project, and the film’s focus is as much on the anticommunist paranoias of the Cold War’s earliest years as on the fearsome physics that vanquished Japan. Also prominent in the narrative is Oppenheimer’s tortured inner life. When the bomb was first successfully tested at the Trinity test site in New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, Oppenheimer said he’d thought to himself the following: “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

This is a line from Chapter 11, Verse 32, of the Bhagavad-Gita—or Song of God—a Sanskrit book of scripture from the Hindu canon. Oppenheimer is said to have described the Gita as “very easy and quite marvelous,” as well as “the most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue.” Its 700 verses are a part of the “Mahabharata,” one of two epics that form the bedrock of Hindu culture. (The other is the “Ramayana.”)

Arthur Ryder, the renowned professor who taught young Oppenheimer Sanskrit, summarized the story of the “Mahabharata” in this way: “The great epic relates the events of a mighty struggle between two families of princely cousins, reared and educated together. In manhood they quarrel over the royal inheritance, and their difference is sternly solved by war.”

“Oppenheimer” has drawn the ire of thin-skinned Hindus by having the physicist (played by Cillian Murphy) utter these words in bed with his naked lover, Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh). India’s central information commissioner—you would be right to ask why such a job exists in a democratic country—described the scene as an “insult” to the Bhagavad-Gita, “which is our holy book.” It isn’t clear why it is an insult, unless we take a hyper-Victorian view of nudity, and in any case Ms. Pugh is shown on Indian screens wearing a computer-generated dress.

Furthermore, Hinduism doesn’t have a holy book in the manner suggested here. The faith instead calls on a library of competing scriptures, none necessarily more important than any other. Hindu nationalists would do well to remember that the elevation of the Gita to such exalted status is the result of its embrace and promotion by 19th-century Western Orientalists.

India’s information czar says the scene is an attack “on our values and civilization,” an “assault on the Hindu community” and “reeks of religious hatred.” If Mr. Nolan doesn’t take out the scene, the commissioner thunders, “we will act.” India’s minister for information and broadcasting—another inexplicable post in a democracy—has threatened stringent action against his own board of film certification.

All of which is a pity, for it squanders an opportunity for India to teach the world a thing or two about the Gita. The line cited by Oppenheimer is part of a dialogue between Arjuna—a warrior who is wavering on the battlefield, reluctant to slay his kinfolk—and Krishna, his spiritual guide. Oppenheimer saw himself in Arjuna’s shoes. Faced with performing a task of death-dealing enormity, he took solace in Krishna’s response, which was to tell Arjuna that it was his “duty” to fight.

As historian James A. Hijiya wrote: “To Oppenheimer the message would have seemed equally clear. If it was proper for Arjuna to kill his own . . . 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.” Or as Wendy Doniger,

Years later, Oppenheimer said: “I did my job which was the job I was supposed to do.” This is good, homespun Hinduism. As Mr. Hijiya has pointed out, there might have been no bomb without the Bhagavad-Gita. Shouldn’t India’s Hindu rage-mongers tear their gaze away from Ms. Pugh’s curves and take note instead of that bracing truth?

Mr. Varadarajan, a Journal contributor, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and at NYU Law School’s Classical Liberal Institute.