They had little chance of stopping the carnage. The horror of that night in Lahore set the tone for weeks of bloodshed and destruction. Perhaps the Hindu astrologers had been right when they had declared 14 August to be an inauspicious date. Or perhaps the viceroy's curious decision to rush independence through ten months ahead of the British government's schedule was to blame.
The world was redefined that night, but not in the way that most of those present thought. On either side of Old Europe, two new powers were rising to world superiority-and both took a close interest in the new dominions of India and Pakistan. In the East, Stalin's Russia was in the process of supporting Communist movements across Europe and Asia, bolstering the influence of Moscow and extending its borders. In the West, the president of the United States of America had announced the Truman Doctrine just five months before. He had stated his intent to promote democracy across the world and resist the tide of communism flowing forth from Russia. The Americans had become particularly concerned about its flow into India, and Russian agents were already suspected of funding Indian Communist parties in Bengal. That very night, Nehru's sister and close confidante, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, was in Moscow, preparing to present her credentials to Stalin as free India's first ambassador.
