Hindus are urging people to avoid watching the Oppenheimer movie due to their strong disapproval of a sexual scene involving actors Cillian Murphy and Florence Pugh, which includes their sacred text, the Bhagavad Gita. They see it as a direct attack on their beliefs.
The movie Oppenheimer, which is about physicist Robert Oppenheimer, came out in theaters last Friday. However, some people are upset because they feel the movie didn’t handle the sacred text, the Bhagavad Gita, well.
In the scene, Oppenheimer’s wife requests him to read from the sacred text during their sex moment, and he ends up saying the famous line he used to describe creating the atom bomb: ‘I am become death, destroyer of worlds.’
Uday Mahurkar, the founder of Save Culture Save India Foundation, wrote a letter to Nolan on Saturday, and it quickly became popular online.
In the letter, he criticized the choice of including the scene in the movie as a strong insult to Hinduism and claimed it was part of a plot against the religion.
‘We do not know the motivation and logic behind this unnecessary scene on life of a scientist. But this is a direct assault on religious beliefs of a billion tolerant Hindus,’ he wrote.
‘It amounts to waging a war on the Hindu community and almost appears to be part of a larger conspiracy by anti-Hindu forces,’ he added before writing a letter to Nolan.
‘Should you choose to ignore this appeal it would be deemed as a deliberate assault on Indian civilisation,’ wrote Mahurkar.
The movie received a U/A certificate from India’s Central Board of Film Certification. This means it has some content suitable for moderate adult themes, and children under 12 can watch it with their parents’ supervision.
In the US, the movie got an R-rating because it contains some adult material. In the UK, it received a 15 rating because of occasional nudity and sexual content.
The Bhagavad Gita is an important and sacred Hindu text. Additionally, some other Indians also urged for a boycott of the movie.
‘I’m calling for a boycott of the movie Oppenheimer. I just learned there is a highly offensive scene involving the Bhagavad Gita in it. I will not repeat it here, but it involves something explicit,’ wrote one user.
