The biopic of Robert Oppenheimer, the mind behind the world’s first atomic bomb, released recently. The movie is in buzz in Indian audience as there is a connection with the Bhagavad Gita. Oppenheimer had a long and documented fascination with the Bhagavad Gita. He learned Sanskrit in the early 1930s while working at Berkeley, after befriending a professor of the language. “We knew the world would not be the same,” he said onscreen. “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 multiarmed form and says, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.”
