Was Oppenheimer really friends with Nehru?

J Robert Oppenheimer, the revolutionary physicist and "Father of the Atomic Bomb," is finally receiving the biopic treatment in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer. It is widely known that Oppenheimer's connection to India stemmed from his admiration for the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita. Having studied Sanskrit at Berkeley, Oppenheimer had read the text in its original ancient language.

"I have now become death, the destroyer of worlds." This quote from the Gita is believed to have been spoken by Oppenheimer following the test of the first successful atomic bomb. He also repeated the same line in a televised interview from 1965, a video of which has been preserved over the years.

However, a book published in 2010 suggests that Oppenheimer's Indian connection may have run deeper, as he might have been friends with India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Nayantara Sahgal, a fiction and non-fiction writer who is the daughter of Vijayalakshmi Pandit and Nehru's niece, sheds more light on an alleged "top secret" message that the American nuclear scientist wanted to convey to the Indian PM in the 1950s.

What happened to Oppenheimer after the bomb (and the war that it ended)? 

Before getting into the nitty-gritties of Oppenheimer’s message, it is important to know about the scientist’s moral dilemmas after the atom bomb. Oppenheimer’s involvement in the secretive Project Manhattan led to the birth of the two atom bombs that caused mass annihilation at Japan’s Hiroshima and Nagasaki, essentially ending World War II in 1945. 

However, after becoming “Death, the destroyer of the worlds”, Oppenheimer refused to get involved in any more US Army-sponsored military projects. The 1950s were a turbulent era in his life as the Pentagon was keen on developing the H-Bomb (Hydrogen Bomb). And while their plans fell through, Oppenheimer denied any involvement in its creation. 

The fact that his wife Kitty Oppenheimer and friends like fellow professors had Communist links brought him under further scrutiny and investigation. Such connections and Oppenheimer’s anti-war sentiments led to a cancellation of a contract as an adviser to the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC).

While Oppenheimer was not held guilty of treason, the government felt he should no longer get access to military secrets. Oppenheimer’s refusal to give up his security clearance culminated in the 1954 Oppenheimer Security Hearings by the AEC. These hearings form a major role in Nolan’s movie too. 

What was Oppenheimer’s alleged message to Nehru all about? 

This is where Nayantara Sahgal’s book Jawaharlal Nehru: Civilizing a Savage World comes in. In the opening pages, Sahgal writes about a worrying phone call that her mother received. This phone call mentioned a secretive message from Oppenheimer to Nehru in an era when Nehru was heading the Non-Alignment Movement to unite Third World powers against the Cold War powers of the US and Soviet Union. 

According to Sahgal, Oppenheimer delivered a secret message through Bengali poet and academic Amiya Chakravarti who was serving as a Princeton faculty member back then. Sahgal writes that the message was top secret before the publication of her book (she still doesn’t explain how she was granted access). 

Oppenheimer believed that America was building friendly relations with India with the hopes to gain access to its thorium reserves. While thorium cannot be used as efficient to make bombs as uranium, thorium is definitely more abundant in nature (with India still being the country with the highest number of thorium reserves).

Oppenheimer’s message possibly talked about the earliest stages of the H-bomb’s development. And he added that the then-US President Harry Truman had also got then-British PM Clement Attlee to get on board. 

To quote Sahgal’s book, “Oppenheimer wants you [Nehru] to know that work of a most ‘horrible and deadly nature’ is being done on the atom bomb, that step by step America is ‘deliberately’ moving towards a war of annihilation. The recent promises given by Truman and Attlee regarding the atom have resulted in research for a weapon of the same deadly quality which will be kept secret and used INSTEAD of the atom.”

But why Nehru? 

Sahgal suggests that Oppenheimer “begged India in the name of humanity to maintain its present foreign policy and not be swayed by any pressure, national or international, to depart from it”. 

The author personally adds that Oppenheimer was no traitor for doing this but he was just desperate to avoid any more catastrophes after Hiroshima-Nagasaki. Commenting on Nehru as a global leader, she writes, “It appeals to a man whom Oppenheimer regards as the sole dependable advocate for peace in circumstances where preparations for a destructive war are proceeding behind a facade of peace.”

How true are Sahgal’s claims? 

If Oppenheimer did send such a message to Nehru, it is difficult to ascertain if Nehru was indeed “the sole dependable advocate for peace” as Sahgal painted him to be. Sahgal’s familial connection with the former PM might also make her claims questionable. 

The claims are more difficult to decode as there are no legal records available to determine how much thorium India provided to the US during the 1950s (even though the American supply of wheat from the 1950s and the 1980s were still widely reported by local and international media). 

Did Nehru write a letter to Oppenheimer? 

Not just Oppenheimer, another non-fiction book claims that Nehru himself might have maintained communication with the scientist. 

According to a new biography of Homi J Bhabha by Bakhtiar K Dadabhoy, Nehru invited Oppenheimer after his trials. Nehru apparently even extended the prospect of immigration to India.

Bhabha is still revered as the father of India’s atomic project and enjoyed popularity among the global science community in his time. He was close with Oppenheimer and the two often used to dine together, creating a strong connection to India for the American scientist.

But when Nehru offered the father of the atomic bomb immigration option to India, Oppenheimer had no choice but to decline, according to Bhabha’s biography, since it would only increase suspicion against him and the permission for the same would be refused. And considering Nehru’s occasional strategic closeness with the Soviets, Oppenheimer’s move to India would have courted further legal trouble. 

Regardless of whether Nehru and Oppenheimer were pen pals or not, it is clear that Oppenheimer remains to be as enigmatic a personality as ever. His disillusionment with his own invention leads to much speculation about his mental dilemmas as a scientist and as an American. This is what makes Nolan’s upcoming biopic all the more hype-worthy.