The bangsa-mindedness of the Utusan Melayu challenged the hierarchy no less than the social and geographic scope of the kerajaan. It built upon the type of dynamic egalitarianism and sense of the possibilities of human progress that had been hinted at in Abdullah's discussion of race. And what is more, the form of bangsa being fostered in Eunos' paper possessed new and specific notions about the procedures members of a community might follow in ordering their affairs. It is in this latter respect that Eunos made his contribution to the ‘invention’ of a discourse of politics and a bourgeois public sphere in Malaya.

At the outset it is worth investigating further what attractions bangsa would have had for a middle class seeking to defend and promote its freedom from the constraints of a hierarchical social system. Abdullah addressed the earliest members of such a Malay class. By the time Eunos wrote, it had grown significantly. Moreover, by propagating bangsamindedness through a newspaper, he was employing a relatively new medium which itself possessed implicitly democratic characteristics.

The Utusan, in fact, was specifically directed not at an aristocratic audience but rather at “the people”, the rakyat. One editorial explains that the paper was written for people “from all walks of life”. In its value judgements the paper often expresses this democratic sentiment. Government, it explains in one editorial, ought to bring benefits to “the people”. Even in the Utusan's description of royal ceremonial events such as the Sultan of Perak's wedding (discussed in the last chapter), the style of presentation is distant in significant ways from that of kerajaan texts.