... as free India's first ambassador. Though its envoys were on good terms with Nehru, the U.S. government was alarmed by these developments and moved fast to create a new alliance with Pakistan. During the nineteenth century, Britain and Russia had played the "Great Game" for control of central Asia, centered in Afghanistan and the territory that would become West Pakistan. In 1947, the United States was gearing up to play a new Great Game against Russia, and the slow but significant rise of a fundamentalist Islamic movement would ensure that Afghanistan and Pakistan would remain at the center of international politics well into the next century.
As darkness fell on 15 August 1947, Delhi's Mughal Gardens glowed with thousands of tiny lights set among the jacaranda trees, and with hundreds of distinguished guests. Among the long avenues of gold mohur and flame-of-the-forest trees, princes chatted cordially to freedom fighters, and Hindu radicals to British soldiers. There was a sense of hope and magic, as two of the twentieth century's greatest men fulfilled their ultimate ambitions. Nehru became leader of a free India, and Mountbatten played the role of a king-with Edwina as his queen. Few of the guests watching this display would have suspected that the celebration was about to be blown apart.
