Friends, Indians, countrymen, lend me your ears

Friends, Indians, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury democracy, not to praise it.
The evil that I have done will live after me;
The good people will be buried or left to just skin and bones;
So let it be with India. The hard working Indians
Hath told you India was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously has India answer’d it.
Here, under leave of politicians, chief ministers and the rest–
For I am an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men–
Come I to speak at India’s funeral.
This was my land, faithful and just to me:
But I say you wanted more freedom than I could allow;
And I am an honourable man.
Migrant workers were stranded on the roads last year
Whose homes and businesses did they work for:
Did their desire to earn a living seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, India hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet I say you want too much;
And I am an honourable man.
You all did see that on the world stage,
I proudly sent vaccines for free,
At the cost of my own countrymen. Was this ambition?
To become humanitarian of the year…
No! as I am just an honourable man.
I speak not to take away your freedoms,
Just to take away your livelihood, sense of family and belonging.
You all did love me once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to just senselessly listen to me.
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts and political scavengers,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me, I still have to campaigns in a few states;
My heart is in the coffin there with democracy,
And I must pause till it comes back to me….(Possibly Friday @8 p.m.)