Conclusion
This concluding chapter analyses Mahatma Gandhi's trial for disaffection in 1922 to show how his canny appropriation of the term as a badge of honor helped galvanize the nationalist movement and reframe the terms of public discourse, bringing the critical subtext and covert nationalism of earlier journalism — its purported disaffection — to the fore and refashioning it as good rather than bad affect. The chapter discusses a brief account of the stakes of this research for the contemporary context. It further explains the concept of disaffection and its value as a way of understanding the relationship between the content of politics and the form of publics. By exploring the dynamics of the imperial public sphere, the chapter sheds a light on why publics continue to be shaped by feelings of exclusion and why exclusion is understood as a feeling. Ultimately, the chapter explains why censorship and free speech debates today so often coalesce around questions of identity and civility.