Khan 375and other power centers within Egyptian nationalism. Certainly within
Egypt itself, the violence associated with “foreign” movements, such as the
Indian or the Russian, was far more openly condemned than praised; and
Egyptian nationalist papers tried to distance themselves from the politi-
cal fallout of Wardani’s act. Meanwhile, the expatriate Indian nationalist
journals celebrated him. Krishnavarma wrote, “There is surely something
sublime in the indifference to the terrors of imminent death displayed
by this brave Egyptian martyr, who in his last moments on earth could,
like the Indian martyr Dhingra, turn his thoughts solely upon the grand
destiny of his country and remain indifferent to the cruel fate impending
over him.”^51
Conclusion
Historians have often echoed the claim of many a British official that it
was only the effect of Western education or exposure to the “free air of
Europe” that inspired nationalist aspirations in the colonies. That most
certainly is not the point of this article. Nor is it to argue that Habermas’s
public sphere did not or could not provide the “non-coercively unifying,
consensus building force of a discourse in which participants overcome
their at first subjectively biased views in favor of a rationally motivated
agreement.”^52 Rather, this paper seeks to demonstrate that there are at
once real advantages and severe limitations to Habermas’s formulation as
applied to a particular nonhegemonic example, and that this information
may be useful for other applications.
e role of students in Europe was crucial to the development and Th
the organization of the nascent national movements for both psychologi-
cal and pragmatic reasons tied directly to the existence of a public sphere
that existed in Europe but not in the colonies. Pragmatically, locations in
Europe gave these men freedom to move, associate, organize, publish, and
protest in ways that were completely unimaginable in their own lands. We
have seen how the laws of press freedom created a constant headache for
British customs and censors, as subversive literature had to be stopped at
point of entry to the colonies rather than at their source. Similarly, guar-
antees of freedom of association and of habeas corpus in Europe made it