“If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One… I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” Oppenheimer thought, when the test was successfully carried out in New Mexico in 1945. While he initially celebrated the achievement, and also the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he later had a crisis of conscience.
Pattanaik, in a chat with the Indian Express, said that when he discovered what Oppenheimer had quoted from the Gita, he was stumped, as he wasn’t familiar with the quote at all. “I did some research on Oppenheimer, and I had never come across this line. I had never heard this line. Someone said it was chapter 11, verse 32, which really says ‘kaal-asmi’, which means ‘I am time, destroyer of the world’. So, his translation itself is wrong. It is not ‘I am death’. It is time, time is the destroyer of the world,” he said.
He added, “For a scientist, if he has used this sentence… And I have seen that video also of his, where he keeps saying, ‘I am death, I am death’. It is very clearly, ‘I am time’. ‘Kaal’ means ‘time’. That is what he is saying, but of course, he gets excited because he’s seeing death and destruction at a massive scale, and he’s obviously seeking some kind of a spiritual background… He comes from a Judeo-Christian background, where God is known to punish people with floods and fire. This act of killing humanity with violence is very much a part of Biblical traditions; it’s not a part of Hindu traditions, not a part of Jain or Buddhist traditions… I think he was looking for some solace, and he found this verse very dramatic.”
Pattanaik said that Oppenheimer was likely in a ‘dharam sankat (ethical dilemma)’ when he carried out the test, and said that humanity has a history of interpreting religious texts differently. “Maybe there was an Indian in his team” who suggested that he should read the Gita, Pattanaik speculated, adding that he doesn’t know if Oppenheimer ever read the text at all.
In fact, Oppenheimer was a student of not just the Gita, but also read Kalidasa’s Meghaduta. He also learned Sanskrit, in order to read these texts in their original form. He’s played by Cillian Murphy in Nolan’s film. Murphy also read the Gita as a part of his research, he told journalist Sucharity Tyagi in an interview.
source: the indian express