Minorities within nation-states frayed by global capitalism are naturally more resentful of hollowed-out but still heavily centralised systems of political and economic domination.

Many ethnic minorities chafed at the postcolonial nationalism of India and Pakistan, and some rebelled.

Since the end of the Cold War, metropolitan elites everywhere have identified progress and modernity with the cornucopia of global capitalism, the consolidation of liberal democratic regimes and the secular ethic of consumerism.

Just as China achieved much more than India in the realm of public health and education under an austere Communist regime, so its economic growth under a capitalist-friendly government strikes a visitor from India as nothing less than spectacular.

It turns out that globalisation, while promising sameness through brand-name consumption, was fostering, through uneven economic growth, an intense feeling of difference.

Political elites look increasingly interchangeable: Blair, Brown, and Cameron have all tried to provide cover for the surrender of sovereignty to foreign investors with invocations of 'British' values, and, more opportunistically, anti-immigrant rhetoric.