‘Oppenheimer’ sees pushback in India over sex scene that quotes Bhagavad Gita

A sex scene from Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster “Oppenheimer” has come under fierce criticism in India after a clip from the movie went viral and sparked the ire of Hindu nationalists. 

In the scene, Cillian Murphy’s character reads from a sacred Hindu text — the Bhagavad Gita — alongside Florence Pugh, who plays psychiatrist and physician Jean Tatlock. 

According to Variety, Pugh stops during intercourse, gets up and goes over to the bookshelf, picks out a copy of the Bhagavad Gita and asks Murphy to read from it.

Murphy then reads out the quote “I am become Death, destroyer of worlds” — a now famous phrase J. Robert Oppenheimer later said popped into his consciousness after the first atom bomb was detonated. 

India’s Information Minister Uday Mahurkar took to Twitter to express his outrage about the creative license Nolan took with the scene.

In an open letter to Nolan, Mahurkar called the scene “a direct assault on religious beliefs of a billion tolerant Hindus,” referring to the sacred text using the spelling Bhagwad Geeta.

“It has come to our notice that the movie ‘Oppenheimer’ contains a scene [which makes] a scathing attack on Hinduism. As per social media reports, a scene in the movie shows a woman making a man read Bhagwad Geeta aloud while getting over him and doing sexual intercourse. She is holding Bhagwad Geeta in one hand, and the other hand seems to be adjusting the position of their reproductive organs,” the letter added. 

“We do not know the motivation and logic behind this unnecessary scene [in the life] of a scientist. But this is a direct assault on religious beliefs of a billion tolerant Hindus, rather it amounts to waging a war on the Hindu community and almost appears to be part of a larger conspiracy by anti-Hindu forces.”

Oppenheimer was drawn to the Hindu text in real life.

In a 1965 NBC News documentary called “The Decision to Drop the Bomb,” he said that “a few people laughed; a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.”

In an interview with Indian film journalist Sucharita Tyagi, Murphy shared that he’d even read the Bhagavad Gita to prepare for his role.

India’s Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) has also come under fire for allowing the scene past its censor board.