24-7-2023 (NEW DELHI) A sex scene in the Hollywood film “Oppenheimer” featuring a line from a Hindu holy scripture has caused uproar in India, with critics calling it a “scathing attack” on the country’s religious beliefs. The biographical drama about US physicist Robert Oppenheimer, played by actor Cillian Murphy, was released in India last Friday, reportedly grossing over $3 million at the box office in two days.
One scene shows Oppenheimer with his lover Jean Tatlock, played by Florence Pugh, in which she opens a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu religious text, and asks him to read from it. Murphy reads the line, “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” a quote which Oppenheimer reportedly recalled when the first nuclear bomb was detonated.
Critics have called this scene a direct assault on the religious beliefs of tolerant Hindus, and have accused the film of waging a war on the Hindu community. Hashtags such as #BoycottOppenheimer and #RespectHinduCulture have been trending on Twitter. Uday Mahurkar, a senior official at the government’s Central Information Commission, wrote to the film’s director, Christopher Nolan, asking him to cut the scene.
Hindus are the majority in India, but Muslims and other minorities form a significant part of the population. Critics say that religious intolerance has been growing in India since the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014.
The Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a prominent right-wing Hindu organization, has demanded an apology from the filmmakers and has said that the scene is an attempt to launch an attack on Hindu society. Spokesman Vinod Bansal told AFP that “the makers should apologize to the Hindu community all over the world whose sentiments have been badly hurt.”
