Question

1
2. The Voice had to be listened to, not only on account of its form but for the matter which it delivered. It gave a message to the
country that it needed greatly. It brought to the common people a realization of their duty to concern themselves with their af-
fairs/The common people were made to take an interest in the manner in which they were governed, in the taxes they paid, in the
return they got from those taxes. This interest in public affairs--politics as you may call it-was to be the concery no longer of the
highly educated few but of the many—the poor, the propertyless, the workingmen in town and country. Politics was not to be
the concern of a small aristocracy of intellect or property of the masses. And with the change in the subjects of politics that Voice
brought about also a change in the objects of politics. Till then politics had busied itself mainly with the machinery of Government
towards making its personnel more and more native, with proposals for a better distribution of political power, with protests against
the sins of omission and of commission of the administration. This Voice switched politics on to concern for the needs of the com-
mon people. The improvement of the lot of the poor was to be the main concern of politics and the politician/The improvement,
especially of the lives of the people of the neglected villages, was to be placed before Governments and political organizations
as the goal of all political endeavour. The raising of the standard of living of the people of the villages, the finding of subsidiary
occupations which would give the agricultural poor work for their enforced leisure during the off season and an addition to their
exiguous income, the improvement of the housing of the poor, the sanitation of the villages--these were to be the objectives to
be kept in view. In the towns, the slums and cheries were to receive especial attention. There was especially a class of the poor for
which that compassionate Voice pleaded and protested. This was for the so-called depressed class, the outcastes of Hindu society.
The denial of elementary human rights to this class of people is considered the greatest blot on Hindu society and history. It raised
itself in passionate protest against the age-old wrongs of this class and forced those that listened to it to endeavour to remove the
most outrageous of them like untouchability. It caused a revolution in Hindu religious practice by having Hindu temples thrown
open to these people. It made the care of them a religious duty of the Hindus by re-naming them Harijans. --Mr Ruthnasami
Questions
1. Why had people to listen to “The Voice" of Mahatma Gandhi?
2. Why had people to take an interest in politics?
3. What was the change brought about in the objects of politics?
4. What improvements were made for the common man?​

Answer 1

1.Because he spoke the voice of a common man

2.It is not about the interest, its about the care. Care about you. If you don't care about your living conditions, employment, medical facilities, security etc.

3. The political discourse has coarsened is self-evident. There is greater intrusion of the media into public.

4.The raising of the standard of living of the people of the villages, the finding of subsidiary occupation, the improvement of the housing of the poor and the sanitation of the villages.