Illuminates the history of western anti-imperialism through the stories of a number of specific friendships that flourished between South Asians and Europeans between 1878 and 1914. This work uncovers the utopian-socialist critiques of empire that emerged in Europe, specifically in Britain, at the end of the nineteenth century.

Gandhi weaves together the stories of a number of South Asian and European friendships that flourished between 1878 and 1914, tracing the complex historical networks connecting figures like the English socialist and homosexual reformer Edward Carpenter and the young Indian barrister M. K. Gandhi, or the Jewish French mystic Mirra Alfassa and the Cambridge-educated Indian yogi and extremist Sri Aurobindo. In a global milieu where the battle lines of empire are re-emerging in newer and more pernicious configurations, "Affective Communities" challenges homogeneous portrayals of "the West" and its role in relation to anti-colonial struggles. Drawing on Derrida's theory of friendship, Gandhi puts forth a powerful new model of the political: one that finds in friendship a crucial resource for anti-imperialism and trans-national collaboration.