On 16th July, 1945, in a desert in Alamogordo in the state of New Mexico, U.S.A. the first atomic explosion in the world took place at 5.45 a.m. which changed the world.
The Director of the Manhattan Project, which manufactured the atomic bomb, was Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the top nuclear physicists in the world, who is also regarded as ‘the father of the atomic bomb’.
Dr. Oppenheimer, apart from being a great scientist, was also a great scholar of Sanskrit. He had studied a vast number of Sanskrit books in original, including the Bhagavad Gita ( which is part of the Bhishma Parva of the Mahabharata).
When the massive nuclear blast whose blazing light covered most of the sky took place, the following words in Chapter 11 shloka 12 came out spontaneously from Dr. Oppenheimer’s lips :
“Divi surya sahastrasya bhaved yugapad utthita
Yadi bhah sadrashi sa syat bhasastasya mahatmanah”
which means :
” If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once in the sky, that would be like the splendour of the mighty One”.
But when the sinister and gigantic mushroom cloud rose higher and higher in the far distance over Point Zero, and some onlookers feared it may soon engulf the whole world, he uttered another line from the Gita : ” Kaalo asmi loka kshaya kritpraviddho” ( Chapter 11 shloka 32). i.e.
” Now I am become Death, the destroyer of the worlds “
( see the book ‘ Brighter Than a Thousand Suns ‘ by Robert Jungk )
Much later, in a television interview in 1965 ( which can be seen on Youtube), Dr. Oppenheimer said
“We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed (immediately after the nuclear explosion), 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 (Arjuna) that he should do his duty, and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form, and says :” Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds”.
