<div><span style="font-size: 1rem;"><b>A se* scene in the Hollywood blockbuster "Oppenheimer" featuring a line from a Hindu holy scripture sparked online outrage in India on Monday, with an official calling it a "scathing attack".</b></span><br></div><div><br></div><div>Critics say religious intolerance has been growing in the world's most populous country since the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014.</div><div><br></div><div>The biographical drama about US physicist Robert Oppenheimer -- played by actor Cillian Murphy -- opened in India on Friday to positive reviews, reportedly raking in more than $3 million at the box office in two days.</div><div><br></div><div>One scene shows Oppenheimer with his lover Jean Tatlock, played by Florence Pugh, in which she opens a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu religious text, and asks him to read from it.</div><div><br></div><div>Murphy reads the line, "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds", the quote which Oppenheimer reportedly recalled when the first nuclear bomb was detonated.</div><div><br></div><div>"This is a direct assault on religious beliefs of a billion tolerant Hindus," Uday Mahurkar, a senior official at the government's Central Information Commission, wrote to the film's director, Christopher Nolan.</div><div><br></div><div>"It amounts to waging a war on the Hindu community," Mahurkar said in the letter, a copy of which he posted on Twitter, and urged Nolan cut the scene.</div><div><br></div><div>Hashtags such as #BoycottOppenheimer and #RespectHinduCulture have been trending on Twitter.</div><div><br></div><div>Harris Sultan, an author, said Hindus were "left angry and perplexed at the blatant disrespect".</div><div><br></div><div>Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a prominent right-wing Hindu organisation, said the movie was an attempt to "launch an attack" on Hindu society and demanded the scene be cut.</div><div><br></div><div>"The makers should apologise to the Hindu community all over the world whose sentiments have been badly hurt," spokesman Vinod Bansal told AFP.</div><div><br></div><div>Hindus are the majority in India but minorities, including Muslims, form a significant part of the population. According to AFP reports&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>bnbd24/fas</div><div><br></div>