India's Minister of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Anurag Thakur has called for the removal of a controversial scene from the Hollywood blockbaster 'Oppenheimer', in which the lead protagonist recites verses from the Hindu religious test, 'Bhagwat Gita, while having sex.
Pushing Back at 'Woke Hollywood'
Since the film's release, this scene has sparked massive outrage on social media, with fervent calls for action to be taken against the filmmaker, actors, and others involved in the making of the movie.
The I&B Minister castigated India's top-level body, the Central Board of Film Certification, for okaying the movie's 'objectionable' scenes for release in Indian theatres last weekend.
According to a source quoted by Indian media, severe measures could be taken against the officials responsible for granting approval for the release of the film in India.
Oppenheimer scandal
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The Central Information Commissioner (CIC) and the founder of Save Culture Save India Foundation (SCSIF), Uday Mahurkar, released a press statement in which he condemned the CBFC and called for an urgent investigation by the I&B Ministry.
Mahurkar said in the statement that 'Bhagwad Gita is not just a most revered scripture of Hinduism but also a divine gift to human civilization by Lord Krishna and an inspiration to many saints, legends, and the common man.
"[...] the entertainment we get is insensitive to the cultural and moral sentiments of masses. Masses are forced to remain helpless recipients of repeated attacks on their foundational values as content-makers get free hand to spend millions in making and promoting morally inappropriate, even disgusting stuff, in name of creativity. There is already a growing dissatisfaction against this," Muhukar tweeted.
Bhagwat Gita Verse
In the movie, actor Cillian Murphy, portraying Robert Oppenheimer, delivers a captivating line that references a verse from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
Revered mythologist Devdutt Pattnaik, as well as Congress leader Jairam Ramesh, have been vocal about the wrong translation of the verse in the movie.
As per Pattnaik, Lord Krishna conveyed to Arjuna the original verse which signifies: “I am mighty Time, the source of destruction that comes forth to annihilate the worlds."
Even without your participation, the warriors arrayed in the opposing army shall cease to exist”.
Pattnaik explained that verse 32 of chapter 11 of the 'Bhagwat Gita' says ‘kaal-asmi’, which means ‘I am time, destroyer of the world’. But in 'Oppenheimer' movie, the actor says, “Now I become Death, the destroyer of worlds”.
"It is not ‘I am death’. It is time, time is the destroyer of the world,” he explained.
While the film has drawn full houses at theatres and is raking in good box-office revenues, the controversial scene in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, starring Cillian Murphy, Florence Pugh, Robert Downey Jr., and Emily Blunt, has enraged a large number of Indian moviegoers.