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Pakistan and Ali Jinnah

PAKISTAN
and Ali Jinnah

by Dane Rudhyar

First Published
American Astrology
September 1948



Written during March 1948 - shortly after the Independence of India and partition of Pakistan - this penetrating article explores the Independence Movement in India, the founding of the Moslem League, and the final partition of Pakistan. Special attention is placed on Ali Jinnah as the founder of Pakistan, and Pakistan's place in the post-WWII world scene. Of special interest is Rudhyar's statements regarding the rising influence of oil-rich Islamic states.
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Pakistan and Ali Jinnah by Dane Rudhyar.


A year ago, on 15 August 1947, Pakistan was constituted as an independent Dominion-State within the British Commonwealth, together with the Dominion of India; and as both dominions had the right to secede from the Commonwealth after June, 1948, it may be that as these pages are read (they are written in March), Pakistan will have become an entirely independent state.

As the reader presumably knows, Pakistan was born as the result of the strenuous efforts of Mohammed Ali Jinnah and under conditions which implied the back-stage pressure of a number of political forces extraneous to the Indian sub-continent ever since the formation of the Moslem League in December, 1906.

Pakistan is a geographically divided nation which is meant to unite the Moslem population of India. Part of the state embraces most of the northwestern section of India, on the borders of Afghanistan and Persia; a smaller section includes part of northeastern India, Bengal, on the borders of Assam and Burma.

The formation of Pakistan was an attempt to solve the problem posed by the division of the population of India between a Hindu majority (around 250 millions) and a Moslem minority (over 100 millions), a problem made even more complex by the existence of independent princely states (population around 93 millions) in which both Hindus and Moslems (and a few other religious groups, such as the Sikhs) live.

This problem originated some twelve centuries ago, when the Arab conquest began, close to the place of the new capital of Pakistan (Karachi), following the tidal expansion of the religion of Mohammed — Islam. Islam spread all over the Near East, as well as through North Africa and up to Spain, where a great center of Moslem (Mozarabic) culture developed up to the tenth century. Mohammed's faith also was absorbed by the Mongol tribes streaming westward from the regions north and west of India (Mongols, Tartars, Turks, etc.).

As one particularly strong wave of Mongol invasion came to flood the northern regions of India in the late fourteenth century, culminating in the famous reign of Akbar the Great (1556-1605), the Moslem faith became even more firmly implanted in India.

When the Mongol Empire broke down, England was ready to come in. Queen Elizabeth had incorporated the London East India Company under Royal Charter on December 31, 1600. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, England moved in where the princes and rajahs who held the remnants of the old imperial power fell or compromised. The first English Governor-General, Warren Hastings, took office in 1774. After a serious mutiny in 1857, India's administration was taken over by the British Crown; and Queen Victoria was crowned Empress of India in 1877.

At the same time, however, a movement for the resurgence of the great spiritual and cultural traditions of India had begun. It acquired an increasingly political coloring when A. O. Hume, a member of the Theosophical Society (founded in 1875 in New York, but soon after with its headquarters transferred to Adyar in southern India), took the leadership in forming the Indian National Congress (December 25, 1885), at the suggestion of Lord Dufterin.

Mr. Hume was sincerely hoping to build up in the souls of the racially and culturally divided Indian groups a unifying sense of nationality; and the Congress was formed in order to "promote the mental, moral, social and political regeneration of the people of India" (Hume's manifesto of March, 1883). The English officials, on the other hand, thought of the Congress as "a safety-valve organization" to channel the growing discontent of Indian intellectuals such as Gokhale and Naoroji. They gave official blessings to the first sessions in 1885, 1886 and 1887. Afterwards, the attitude changed. The Boer War of 1900, the despotism of Lord Curzon's Administration, the temporary partition of Bengal served to strengthen the emergent Indian nationalism under such leaders as Tilak, first advocate of self-rule, swaraj.

The Calcutta Congress of 1906, even under the Moderate, Dadabhai Naoroji, came to advocate the boycott of all things British; and the more extreme Nationalists, led by Tilak, split in 1907 — which led to wholesale imprisonments, but also to the Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909. After much Home-Rule agitation (led by Tilak, B. P. Wadia and Mrs. Annie Besant), the Imperial Pronouncement of August 20, 1917, announced His Majesty's Government's intention to work towards giving responsible self-government to India "as an integral part of the British Empire".

August 20, 1917 — August 15, 1947. the first date followed a conjunction of Saturn and Neptune in Leo 5º; the second, a conjunction of Saturn and Pluto in Leo 14°. What happened during this 30-year cycle of Saturn? A vacillating and often inept British Administration had been faced by Gandhi; in fear, it gave presumably its backstage support to the political growth of the Moslems, led by Jinnah. The Moslem League of 1906 was, no doubt, formed as an antidote to Tilak's nationalist movement. Pakistan came in the thirties as an answer — calculated or not — to Gandhi, after Jinnah had broken with the Hindu leader and had come for a two-years' stay in England (1929), probably a fateful one.

The Moslem League was constituted as the result of the initiative taken by Nawab Salimullah, who secularized the Moslem leaders on November 9, 1906. Moslem representatives from all over India came in December to a meeting held in Dacca under the presidency of Nawab-Wagar-ul-Mulk; and the League was formed, apparently, on December 25 — which happened to be Jinnah's birthday.

Jinnah was then thirty (note again the Saturn cycle); but at this very time, he was private secretary to the previously mentioned leader of the Indian National Congress, Naoroji, a Moderate. Jinnah has never been a devout or even orthodox Mohammedan, and he married a Parsi girl. Naoroji was also a Parsi; the Parsi are descendants of Persian followers of the religion of Zoroaster, exiled from Persia when Islam conquered that land around 700 AD. They are found today mainly in and around Bombay, where they occupy important places in industry and commerce, being very active, mentally brilliant and usually wealthy.

Jinnah, like Gandhi, was educated in England. On his return to India, he became very successful as a lawyer. But while Gandhi's heart was immeasurably moved by the poor and the oppressed (he became in South Africa the apostle of non-resistance and love), Jinnah's mind and ego remained intensely aristocratic and utterly separate from the masses.

Jinnah once privately suggested (according to Nehru) that only matriculates should be accepted in the Indian Congress. Nevertheless, for many years, he worked in the Congress as one of the leaders; and in 1916 (when Turkey was being defeated by the Allies), he helped to bring a pact between the Congress and the Moslem League. He became that year for the first time President of the League, a post which he has held uninterruptedly since 1934.

Came the fateful year 1919. The end of World War I somehow made the British Government forget many of the promises made in 1917. Gandhi, who had worked untiringly for the Government during the war, protested. The Rowlatt Act, born of British fears, and on April 13, the massacre at Amritsar of an unarmed Indian mob by English troops aroused India — as the Battle of Lexington had aroused the American Colonies. Gandhi was imprisoned.

The same year, the Khilafat problem arose. The Sultan of Turkey, as Khalif of Islam, was the spiritual head of the Moslem world. The Peace Conference of 1919 dispossessed him of the Holy Places of Islam, apparently against England's promises to the Indian Moslems.

Gandhi was further outraged and sided with the Moslems. It was a religious matter; and to Gandhi, none could be more important. On August 1, 1920, the non-Cooperation Movement was launched. We find on that day a stellium in Leo — Sun, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Neptune were opposed by an Aquarius Moon, while Saturn in Virgo opposed Uranus in Pisces, standing on Jinnah's Saturn (Jupiter was conjunct his Uranus). An All-India Khilafat Conference was held in Delhi on November 24. In March, 1922, Gandhi was again arrested and tried — an amazing trial.

However, in spite of Gandhi's support of the Moslems, Jinnah began in 1920 to criticize Gandhi sharply. This was largely because of the latter's concern with the masses of India, as well as because of his spiritual attitude, which was completely foreign to a man of Jinnah's character. The disunity grew, especially after Mustapha Kemal in Turkey abolished the Khilafat.

The Moslem League grew in influence; and after Gandhi began his great Civil Disobedience campaign in 1929, Jinnah went to England. Later, at the London Round Table Conferences in which India's problems were being discussed, Jinnah demanded separate political representation for the Moslem population and eventually the formation of the incongruous and geographically scattered state of Pakistan. The partition of India became publicly advocated at the 1938 session of the Moslem League and was consummated in 1947.

Whatever maybe said to have been the basic reasons for Jinnah's actions, it seems evident that he is a typical representative of the aristocratic group of truly feudal leaders who still dominate the Arab world. It seems equally evident that, at least with Jinnah, religion is a cloak and a means to gain popular support for the perpetuation and glorification of "special interests"; and in the Arab world (though not in Pakistan, I believe), these special interests of the very small ruling caste are fed by the magic power of oil!

We present here the chart of the birth of Pakistan at midnight, August 14-15, 1947, Karachi time (which differs a good deal from New Delhi time), and also a tentative birth-chart for Jinnah. The hour of Jinnah's birth is not publicly known, but I have been informed by friends from India that he is usually thought to have Pisces as his ascendant, which seems quite befitting.

The chart with Pisces 15º rising appears to match the few events of Jinnah's life I was able to ascertain; and it brings the progressed Sun to the ascendant in 1947, when the English Government and Gandhi finally agreed to the Partition scheme. It is possible, nevertheless, that an earlier ascendant with Saturn just above it would be more correct, stressing the Saturnian features of a Capricorn natal Sun and placing Jupiter in the tenth house.

Jupiter in the ninth house is significant inasmuch as Jinnah made a fortune from his law practice and established his power on the use of religious feelings. The coincidence of the natal horizon with the Moon's nodes axis is characteristic of a man who played a fateful part in world history.

With Jinnah, as with many Indian leaders and the charts of the Dominions, planetary squares in fixed zodiacal signs are in evidence. In Jinnah's chart, all planets are on one side of the line of opposition formed by Mars (in Scorpio) and Pluto (in Taurus), except Uranus (retrograde in Leo and in the sixth house), which squares this opposition. To these squares, we should add those between the Moon and Mercury, Saturn and Venus; and these are so interlocked as to generate three semi-squares between the four planets. Venus being some 97° degrees distant from Uranus, another square could also be counted, especially as Uranus squares the exact midpoint of the 16°arc between Mars in Scorpio and Venus in Sagittarius.

With Uranus strongly emphasized by aspects, retrograde and in the sixth house, the chart has strongly revolutionary and ruthless implications, and the fact that the three transcendent and universalistic planets (Uranus, Neptune and Pluto) alone are retrograde tends to strengthen the narrow political focusing of Jupiter and a Capricorn Sun colored by a Saturn close to the ascendant.

It will be noted that Jinnah's Mars is at Scorpio 17° adding to the general emphasis of the Indian leaders' charts at this point, which was highlighted by the solar eclipse of November 12, 1947, and also by the opposing solar eclipse of May 9, 1948. Gandhi's Mars is on Scorpio 19° (his Venus, on Scorpio 17°) ; Nehru's Sun is on Scorpio 22 1/2º; Patel's Venus is on Scorpio 17 1/2º, with Jupiter, the Sun and Mercury earlier in the sign — and at the Dominions' birth, Jupiter was on Scorpio 19° squared by the massed Leo planets, not to mention the Scorpio emphasis shown also by other charts linked with India's struggle for freedom.

This massive emphasis on the fixed signs of the zodiac, especially Scorpio and Leo, certainly suggests much intense emotionalism and fanaticism being unloosened. The events to date have already proven this to be true; and, alas, the likelihood is that much more will follow. On the other hand, the midpoints of these fixed signs are what we have called long ago the "Avataric Gates" — that is, the points of focalization for the release of divine or cosmic power.

The whole of India's civilization has been and must still be stamped by an emphasis upon a release of divine-spiritual power, and the negative shadow of it is obviously religious emotionalism and incredibly irrational and violent fanaticism. It was this shadow which Gandhi lived and died to redeem and transfigured into ahimsa, non-violence, and satyagraba, soul-force. Jinnah could not stand such an attempt which ran counter to his nature and his ego; he rebelled against it and sought to destroy it — with the help of the equally fanatic orthodox Hindus, one of whom killed Gandhi. Pakistan's birth-chart is identical in planetary positions with that of New India which was printed in the February, 1948, issue, as officially the new state was born on the same midnight — twins, indeed! The inaugural ceremonies were held on August 14, for Lord Mountbatten could not obviously be at both Karachi and Delhi at the same time; but the time of the legal beginning of both new states is identical. However, the cusps of the houses differ because of the difference in longitude and latitude of the two capitals; and the chart for Karachi, capital of Pakistan, has Taurus 18° rising — instead of the first degree of Gemini, as in the Delhi chart.

The difference is important in that it focalizes further the meaning of mid-Scorpio and throws Jupiter into the above the horizon hemisphere as a singleton. As the seventh house of a mundane chart signifies the partner or the enemy, and as this obviously refers to the Dominion of India, it seems that India has the advantage over Pakistan.

The situation is not without many peculiarities, and the Pakistan chart has a strangely fateful strength which suggests that the new state has a part of destiny to play which far transcends its boundaries and perhaps even the boundaries of the Indian peninsula. Certainly the two previously mentioned eclipses strike Pakistan's very being in the most direct manner; and as the world moves toward the critical configurations of the years 1951-1953, it is well to remember that in 1951-52, Pluto will reach the Sun of the two Dominions' charts, that Uranus is moving over their Mars this summer and next year, transiting over their Moon in 1954-55, while Saturn reaches their Jupiter — not to mention important eclipse tracks also in 1954.

Pakistan occupies a significant position inasmuch as it guards the route which all the invaders of India have taken in the past. This may mean that, as a weak and economically unsound nation, it will invite new invasions; or it might act as a buffer state between a renascent India and powerful neighbors to the northwest.

The key to the whole problem seems to be the character of the future relationship between Soviet Eurasia and the Arab world; and this key is thoroughly dipped in oil — which makes it slippery and elusive!

When early Christianity betrayed its spiritual mission and, while triumphing in Rome, became in fact conquered by the organizational and formalistic spirit of the Roman Empire, the centers of culture where the early church became transformed away from the real message of Christ — Alexandria, Antioch, Asia Minor and later Constantinople — were invaded by Moslems. When India failed to assimilate the message of Gautama the Buddha and Buddhism vanished under the pressure of renascent orthodox Hinduism, Islam came and gradually conquered India.

Buddha and Christ — the two great Teachers of a universalistic spirit and of an attitude towards life addressed primarily to the individual and based on a spiritual and free regeneration of man. Some of their disciples threw their teachings out of focus; both primitive and over-intellectual peoples were attracted into the orb of the new and revolutionary ideals and materialized them. Wherever this happened, the tide of Islam rolled in.

Today, the Moslem world has most likely not the strength to invade; but it has the greatest known potential oil resources, and it lies at the crossroads of empires, a vast crescent formation extending from Gibraltar to the northwest of India, with roots across Africa. It is easy to see why what remains of the British-dominated world can ill afford to antagonize Islam too deeply, why any American expansive oil policy must reckon with it. What is not clear yet is the Soviet's attitude. The fate of Pakistan and of the world is depending upon what this attitude will be; and Jinnah's life work involves, thus, our future and the future of mankind.

Jinnah is governor-general and Dictatorial ruler of Pakistan. He has reached, at seventy, his ambitious goal; but he is a sick and lonely man. Just now, his progressed Sun is in sextile to his natal Mercury and in trine to his Mars; and he triumphed under such a progression. But next comes a square of this progressed Sun to Jupiter, ruler of the tenth house; and it is most likely that with it the certain will fall, as progressed Mars reaches also the natal Sun, in 1949.

Significant should be the conjunction of Mars and Jupiter on November 30, 1948 (heliocentric, on November 6) on Jinnah's natal Sun, with a New Moon on Sagittarius 9° (half-way between his Venus and Jupiter) squared by Saturn in Virgo opposite its natal place. Pluto will then square his natal Mars, which received the full blow of the November, 1947, and May, 1948, eclipses. November should be a crucial month — if nothing happens before. Indeed, the entire fall might be very important for the Dominions — as it will, no doubt, be for our country in the throes of elections and for an uneasy world.

In B. V. Raman's "Astrological Magazine" for October, 1947, published in Bangalore, India, the birth-data of several Indian leaders are given. The magazine reached me after I had written and sent my article on India in which I had given to Premier Nehru a Sagittarius ascendant. Raman's data for Nehru's birth gave instead a Leo 15° ascendant. Another Hindu correspondent had suggested Scorpio rising.

I had thought of Leo as rising sign and erected a tentative chart for approximately the time claimed by the Indian magazine to be correct — in fact, for Leo 14° which is the nadir point of India's re-birth as an independent national entity, a Dominion within the British Commonwealth — and also the degree of the rather tragic conjunction of Saturn and Pluto which highlighted India's re-birth. For a number of reasons, I had convinced myself that the Sagittarius ascendant might be the correct one. I had hoped it would be. The Raman testimony may prove my hope was not true; and recent photos of Nehru at Gandhi's funeral do suggest a Leo-rising type of features more strongly than any previous photos I had seen of India's Premier.

I say "hope", for it would be far better and healthier for Nehru as a person if he had Sagittarius rising. However, the exact contact between Nehru's mid-Leo ascendant (with the Moon just above the horizon in the twelfth house) and the powerful stellium or group of planets in Leo on August 15, 1947, when India became technically free, places an extraordinary emphasis upon Nehru's role as the first actual head of new India's Government. It makes him as well bear the full weight of the meaning of India's planetary stellium in his own individual personality.

Pluto will reach Nehru's Leo ascendant in mid-September, 1949 — and as well India's Venus in the fourth house. We hope that this ascendant is actually on the fifteenth and not the sixteenth degree of Leo, so that the transit of Pluto over it occurred when Gandhi was assassinated, and it refers to that tragic event.

In any case, the month of September, 1948, and the beginning of October, with Mars transiting Scorpio and Nehru's Sun, are likely to be times of great stress for India and her leader. The Mars transit activates the place of the eclipse of November 12, 1947, which fell so close to Jupiter in India's chart (sixth house) ; and the total solar eclipse of November 1, 1948, occurs within one degree of Nehru's Mercury — not to mention the annular eclipse of May, 1948, which opposes India's Jupiter.

It has been said that Sardar Patel (born October 31, 1875), in spite of his age, is the "strong man" in India's Government. His extraordinarily powerful birth chart bears this out. All planets (except perhaps the Moon if he was born in the morning) are involved in a formidable perfect cross in fixed signs. If any man can protect Nehru, he most likely will. Yet he will also receive the full force of the Pluto transit and of the Scorpio-Taurus eclipses — and he was not able to save Gandhi's life this year; Gandhi's birth-chart also displayed a fixed-signs cross (completed only with the help of the Moon's nodes) closely linked with Patel's. But, then, Patel's Uranus (opposed exactly by Saturn) was within a few minutes of Gandhi's natal Moon; and did Gandhi want his life saved? The interview he gave to Miss Bourke-White a few hours before his assassination suggests that there could not have been a more significant end to his noble career. The crown of martyrdom is still, in our very "dark ages", a finishing touch to the life of one who may not truly die.

In any case, watch Patel. He is reaching what maybe the apex of his power during 1948 and 1949; and no half-way measures should be expected of him.





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