The rain over Lahore had passed, leaving the Government House gardens slick and shining. Inside, the air was dry, heavy with paper and tobacco and the residue of too many decisions made too quickly.
The Governor, Sir Geoffrey de Montmorency, rose from his chair and walked toward the tall window, hands clasped behind his back. The jasmine-scented Sandalbar shawl lay folded on the table, its twin seals — Crown and estate — catching the light.
One condition after another had been accepted: fifty villages under experimental management, American cotton seed trials, a recognised medical mandate through Sandalbar's clinics.
But one request still sat in his mind like a stain that refused to be blotted out.
The radio.
"Muhammad," he said at last, without turning, his voice low but carrying easily across the polished room, "there is something I must ask plainly before we proceed."
Jinnah waited, composed, near the table. His hat lay beside the shawl; his thin hands rested lightly on the back of a leather chair. He had known the question would come. It was the one item on his list that did not fit neatly under agriculture, health, or local governance.
Radio belonged to a different category altogether: power.
The Governor turned slowly to face him.
"Why a radio?" he asked. "Why in a rural estate? Why now?"
His tone held no heat — only suspicion and the wary patience of an administrator who understood that information, not rifles, was the Empire's most dangerous commodity.
"Radio is not merely entertainment or education," he continued, coming closer. "It is a voice that can speak to thousands at once, without a policeman in the room to hear the words. So tell me, truthfully… what do you intend to broadcast to fifty villages?"
Jinnah paused.
If he framed it as modernity, the Governor would call it a luxury. If he framed it as education, he would call it a distraction. It had to be framed as something the Crown truly respected.
Security.
He drew one hand from the chair, letting it rest by his side like a barrister about to address a jury.
"Governor," he said quietly, "do you remember the incident between the Zaildars last year? The communal flare-up near the Gugera branch canal?"
Sir Geoffrey stiffened.
"How could I forget?" he said. "It nearly became a district-wide crisis. We had to deploy a company of soldiers simply to stop them burning each other's harvests."
Jinnah nodded.
"That crisis," he said, "did not begin with a stolen cow or a real insult. It began with rumor."
The Governor frowned.
"What sort of rumor?"
"Falsehoods," Jinnah replied. "Exaggerations. Twisted words carried from one dera to another. Claims that one caste had insulted another's women. That livestock had been stolen by a particular sect. That a shrine had been desecrated in the night."
His voice hardened slightly.
"None of it verified. All of it repeated — by men who enjoyed seeing others afraid more than they enjoyed seeing them safe. Within forty-eight hours, two groups who had lived side by side for a decade were ready to take up lathis and murder their neighbours."
Sir Geoffrey's mouth tightened as the memory returned: urgent telegrams, contradictory village reports, officers asking for reinforcements.
"It was a tinderbox," he admitted. "We were fortunate it did not spread further."
"Fortunate," Jinnah agreed. "Not efficient."
He moved a step closer, the distance between them now that of two men on the same bridge, looking down at the same river — but with very different ideas about where it might flood next.
"We were lucky Harrington acted quickly," Jinnah went on. "Lucky the Farabis were already organising the villages and could separate the mobs. Lucky that word reached Lahore fast enough that you could move troops before the fire became too large."
And lucky,Bilal observed in his mind, that the wind blew the way you expected when you lit the first whispers.
Jinnah did not let the thought reach his face.
"Had we relied solely on the district army unit," he said aloud, "they would have taken a week to arrive."
A long silence followed. The clock on the mantel clicked each second into the room.
"A week," Jinnah repeated, "is the difference between an ugly quarrel and a tragedy. Between a local incident… and another set of riots on the scale of 1907."
The Governor sank slowly back into his chair, the weight of that year hanging between them. He had not been in Punjab then, but he had read the files; he knew what it meant for a province to erupt faster than the state could write orders.
Jinnah did not press. He simply waited, letting the implication settle.
"You asked me why a radio is necessary," he said at last.
He opened his palms slightly, as if offering the shape of the argument rather than pushing it.
"It is necessary," he said, "because rumor is a weapon. A spark that runs ahead of your police, your patrols, your clerks, your telegrams. In the absence of a trusted voice, the loudest liar becomes the truth."
The Governor listened without interrupting now.
"Radio," Jinnah concluded, his tone turning almost clinical, "is the only tool we have that can spread truth faster than rumor."
The words hung there, simple and precise.
Sir Geoffrey looked at him, seeing not a sentimental reformer but a barrister who had just filed the opening submission in a difficult case.
He understood, perhaps for the first time, that this was not about gramophones and songs for peasants.
It was about who would speak first into the ears of fifty villages when the next whisper started.
And whether that voice would serve the Crown — or those who resented it.
The Governor drummed his fingers softly on the table.
The argument made sense. That was the problem.
Radio as a weapon against rumor. Radio as a faster telegram that could sing. Radio as a policeman without boots.
But control… Who would truly hold the reins once the switch was thrown?
Jinnah saw the hesitation and moved before it hardened into refusal.
"Allow me to make the case clearly," he said, ticking off points on his fingers with the same calm precision he used in court.
"First: Educational broadcasts," he began. "Health bulletins. Agricultural advisories — when to sow, when to harvest, how to respond when the river rises. Weather warnings so that no flood catches us sleeping. Sanitation instructions spoken into homes, removing the shame of public lectures. A literate population begins with an informed population."
The Governor's fingers paused.
"Second: Crown public relations," Jinnah continued. "Every evening, a short bulletin. Relief efforts, clearly announced. District progress reports. Explanations of new tax regulations, so rumors cannot turn them into monsters. Direct rebuttal of false stories before they grow teeth."
He let the idea hang a moment.
"A powerful answer," he added, "to those who stand in bazaars and shout that the Crown does nothing."
Sir Geoffrey's eyes narrowed, less in suspicion now and more in calculation.
"Third: An anti-rumor engine," Jinnah said. "If a lie begins in any village — that the canal water is being poisoned, or that grain is being seized without compensation — the radio allows us to crush it instantly. An official voice. A doctor, a magistrate, a priest or imam confirming the same message. The spark dies before it reaches the powder."
He raised a fourth finger.
"Fourth: Dignity," he said. "Song. Storytelling. Poetry. The village must not feel that the only time the Crown visits is to collect tax or impose orders. It must also, occasionally, bring a song, a story, a recitation that reflects their lives and languages."
He did not say: a Crown that can recite a couplet in their tongue makes them hesitate before stoning its police. He did not need to.
"And fifth: Entertainment," he finished. "Music. Debates. Simple plays. Bored men are dangerous men, Governor. Men listening to an evening story are men who are not standing in the square inventing plots, or drinking, or being recruited by whoever shouts loudest."
Silence again.
It was not the stunned silence of the first argument. It was the silence of a man turning a key in an invisible lock, checking how many doors it opened.
"And who," the Governor said at last, "will control the content?"
Now the true concern had surfaced.
"A microphone is a dangerous object, Muhammad, in the wrong hands."
Jinnah gave him the expression he reserved for nervous witnesses: steady, reassuring, just short of amused.
"You will," he said.
The Governor blinked.
"Every bulletin," Jinnah continued, "every program, every teaching segment will be logged, transcribed, and open to review by your office. This will be a Crown-sanctioned radio station. I administer the platform. I do not own it."
He let his voice cool further.
"If I broadcast sedition," he said, "you cut the power and arrest me. I am not hiding in hills with a stolen transmitter. I will be in a bungalow whose address is in every police ledger."
Sir Geoffrey stared at him, weighing not only the words but the posture behind them.
"You intend," he said slowly, "to make this radio a stabilising force."
"A unifying force," Jinnah corrected gently.
He added the final edge he knew would appeal not only to the Governor but to Delhi.
"And, if we are being honest," he said, "a very effective anti-Congress force. Villagers who hear, daily, about better crops, better prices, better health under Crown supervision will be less susceptible to the spinning-wheel message. Truth about grain and drains will reach them before any abstract slogan does."
The Governor's eyes sharpened. Now he saw it fully:
A network of fifty villages where the loudest daily voice would not be Congress pamphlets or wandering agitators, but a disciplined, logged, reviewable broadcast under his own authority.
"This," he murmured, almost to himself, "could easily become the most powerful civil tool in the Punjab."
"It will save lives," Jinnah said mildly. "Prevent unrest. And keep those fifty villages trained to look to the Crown for order rather than to those who promise glory and give only chaos."
He did not mention the part that was strictly between himself and the second voice in his head.
He did not mention that he knew how destructive rumor could be because he had already used it once — through Madhu and the Root — to turn two Zaildars against each other and quietly break their grip on the countryside.
You are selling them their own propaganda machine,Bilal said, faintly amused. And they will pay for the mast, the operator, and the batteries.
Jinnah kept his expression steady.
The Governor rose.
He walked around the table and extended his hand — not as a man tolerating an eccentric request, but as one sealing a strategic pact.
"Muhammad," he said, "you shall have your radio station. And the receivers for these… villages of yours."
Jinnah bowed his head slightly as he took the offered hand. Gratitude, yes — but also a quiet, measured triumph.
"Thank you, Governor," he said. "It will be used well."
Sir Geoffrey escorted him toward the door.
"At this rate," he remarked, half wry, half sincere, "this broadcast may become the Empire's most effective civilian instrument in the province. Use it wisely."
Jinnah set his hat on his head, the line of his mouth almost — but not quite — turning into a smile.
"That," he replied, "is precisely the point."
Outside, the air smelled of wet earth and coal smoke. Somewhere not far away, in a narrow street, someone would this evening spread a false tale for sport or malice.
Soon enough, if his plans held, Sandalbar would answer them — not with rumours of its own, but with a clear voice carried on invisible waves.
And the first experiment in teaching a province to listen before it burned would truly begin.