Myrdal gives details on how the complex and subtle interpersonal norms that governed human relationships to the produce of land in pre-British India were forced into the straitjacket of British concepts of property rights. Somebody had to be the landlord, and somebody had to be the tenant. There had to be a “settlement” deciding who owned what so that the British tax collectors would know on whom to levy, and who would forfeit ownership in case the taxes were not paid. Among the consequences of modernizing concepts of land tenure were disorientation, greater exploitation of the strong by the weak, and hunger. Myrdal also gives examples where the same consequences flowed from the imposition of western concepts of contract law.

Some features of the simplification of ethics described in detail by authors Gandhi cites in his recommended readings appended to Hind Swaraj and also by Dumont, Polanyi, and Myrdal, are depicted in a few words by Jawaharlal Nehru in his history of India as follows:

“The destruction of village industries [by British manufactures] was a powerful blow to these communities [the traditional villages of India]. The balance between industry and agriculture was upset, the traditional division of labor was broken up, and numerous stray individuals could not easily be fitted into any group activity. A more direct blow came from the introduction of the landlord system, changing the whole conception of the ownership of land. This conception had been one of communal ownership, not so much of the land as of the produce of the land. Possibly not fully appreciating this, but more probably taking the step deliberately for reasons of their own, the British governors, themselves representing the British landlord class, introduced something resembling the English system in India. At first they appointed revenue-farmers for short terms, that is persons who were made responsible for the collection of the revenue or land tax and payment of it to the Government. Later these revenue-farmers developed into landlords. The village community was deprived of all control over the land and its produce; what had always been considered as the chief interest and concern of that community now became the private property of the newly created landowner. This led to the breakdown of the joint life and corporate character of the community, and the cooperative system of services and functions began to disappear gradually.