Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, July 24: India’s first prime minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had invited Robert J Oppenheimer, the “father of atom bomb,” to migrate to India and offered him Indian citizenship when the United States government had tightened its screws on him in 1954.
The offer was given by Nehru at the insistence of the Indian atomic scientists Dr Homi Jehangir Bhabha who was a good friend of Oppenheimer ad they had often exchanged views. Oppenheimer, however, had declined Nehru’s offer stating that he would not leave the shores of the US till he was cleared of all the charges.
This is revealed in a book “Homi J Bhabha: A Life,” a 723-page biography on Homi Bhabha written by Bakhtiyar K Dadabhoy, which was released in April, this year. The book talks about the friendly relationship between Oppenheimer and Bhabha.
Called the “father of atom bomb,” Robert Oppenheimer, the subject of Christopher Nolan’s latest film, was an American physicist. With the release of the film, there is renewed interest in the life of the scientist. In India, the film was released on Friday last week and immediately became a subject matter of a controversy with a section of the Indian movie-goers calling it an “attack on Hinduism” because of a sex scene where Oppenheimer is seen reading from Bhagavad Gita.
The central government Information Commissioner Uday Mahurkar had expressed displeasure and raised objection over the scene, seeking an urgent investigation by the I&B Ministry into the matter. Taking note of the matter, the Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting Anurag Thakur has sought an explanation from the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) over the “objectionable” scene.
It is learnt that the Union Minister has instructed that accountability with respect to the issue of certificate be fixed. The filmmakers may also be asked to remove the impugned scene. In a statement Mahurkar had said the depiction of the Bhagavad Gita in the scene was an insult to the sacred book. “…this portrayal undermines our values and heritage, and it is deeply offensive to the Hindu community,” he had said.
Dadabhoy in his has mentioned that “In all probability, Bhabha met Oppenheimer after the war had ended and the two became good friends. This was hardly surprising since Oppenheimer like Bhabha was a highly cultured man. He had studied Sanskrit and was also conversant with Latin and Greek.”
After the atomic bomb he created was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War, Oppenheimer was shaken as he did not realise the devastating use his discovery would be made by the US. In the development phase, he had assuaged his colleagues’ ethical hesitations about developing the powerful bomb, saying they are only doing their job and they were not responsible for decisions about how the weapon should be used.
But once the deed was done, the physicist argued against the development of further weapons, especially the hydrogen bombs, which his work had paved the way for. The changed stance resulted in Oppenheimer being investigate by the US government in 1954 and having his security clearance stripped, and he could no longer get involved in policy decisions. It was against this backdrop that he was offered Indian citizenship by Nehru on the insistence of Bhabha, the book revealed. “When Oppenheimer lost his security clearance in 1954 it was presumably on Bhabha’s intervention that he was invited by Jawaharlal Nehru on more than one occasion to visit India, and even immigrate if he so wished,” Dadabhoy said about the issue.
But the physicist declined because he felt it would not be proper for him to leave the US until he had been cleared of all the charges. “He feared that permission would not only be refused, but also that it would only increase suspicion about him,” Dadabhoy’s book said.
