Khan 373other nationalist movements, as the commonality of colonial status out-
weighed the differences when the expatriates were a small minority in an
alien, dominant, and often threatening society. Not a few of the alliances
described above seemed based on personal friendships no doubt more
easily developed among “fellow colonials” abroad than between a native
and a foreigner within any colony. Thus, we find Chattopadhya mov-
ing into the same building as Farid in Paris when his own flat was being
remodeled,^46 while another Indian activist stopped in Egypt on the way
back from completing his degree in order to visit an Egyptian friend who
was a noted “extreme Egyptian nationalist.”^47 That these students became
friends while abroad is hardly noteworthy. However, that national activ-
ists from different colonies did so at the same time as they were orga-
nizing their separate programs against British imperialism cannot be
overlooked. Friendship or conspiracy; even today it is hard to tell where
one ended and the other began. For the Empires’ young expatriates in the
early 1900s, their time in Europe allowed them to develop both.
Violence and enlightenment
It is telling that the metropole provides a connection between the two
murders mentioned here. That political violence and targeted assassina-
tion seem to be the first obvious modern political imports from Europe
(or India) to Egypt is also revealing. It was precisely the issue of political
violence that was under discussion in the expatriate salons and congresses
of the metropoles. The students who gathered in the colonial metropoles
discussed Russian revolutionaries and Mazzini’s writings; Gandhi was a
minor lawyer in South Africa and the concept of passive resistance had
not yet entered the political lexicon. While Wardani claimed he was not
acting on behalf of the Nationalist Party in assassinating Ghali, he was
acting in character with the milieu to which he had been exposed and
the ideals that he had developed through his association with anti-impe-
rialists in Europe, not Egypt—however fervent the nationalist zeal in the
homeland.
ot enough attention has been given to the very real commitment N
Wardani evidenced toward the Enlightenment ideals so beloved of his