On Sunday (May 7) morning, the Executive Editor of the propaganda outlet, The News Minute, courted controversy after he endorsed the idea of sending half of the Indians to ‘re-education camps’ – a system (gulag) reminiscent of the Soviet State between the 1920s and mid-1950s.
Sudipto Mondal was enraged at the sight of lakhs of people, waiting in anticipation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s roadshow in Bengaluru. As such, he suggested that those individuals do not belong to a ‘civilised society’ for the virtue of supporting the BJP.
While reacting to a tweet (archive) by PM Modi thanking Bengalureans for their overwhelming show of support, the Executive Editor of The News Minute wrote, “One day we will have to forgive half our population just like Rwanda and Germany did and start a reeducation program for people who we know do not belong in civilised society.”
Re-education camps and Communist regimes
Despite being well aware of the dark history of ‘re-education camps’, Sudipto Mondal evoked the examples of Rwanda and Germany and hoped that half of India is ‘civilised’ through such programmes.
For him, a large chunk of India’s population is unfit to be a part of civilised society due to their association/ likeness to the BJP and then ought to be indoctrinated otherwise.
It must be mentioned that re-education centres have been used by Communist regimes from time to time to punish and control political dissidents and anyone perceived as a threat.
Soviet Russia had a network of forced labour camps, which were in operation from the 1930s until the 1950s. They were known as the ‘Gulag’. Within this system, there were specific ‘re-education’ camps which were designed to brainwash political prisoners who were believed to have deviated from Communism.
The Gulag system was established under the regime of Joseph Stalin. Prisoners in these camps were subjected to long hours of work in dangerous and difficult conditions, with little food or medical care.
The re-education programmes were often conducted through a combination of physical and psychological coercion, including beatings, torture, and forced confessions.
Prisoners were also exposed to propaganda and ideological indoctrination, which aimed to convince them of the superiority of the Soviet State and the need to abide by those values.
The use of re-education camps in the Gulag system was widely criticised for human rights abuses, and violations of basic principles of justice and fairness. An estimated total of 1.2-1.7 million people died at such centres.
The Gulag system began to decline in the 1950s under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, who initiated a process of “de-Stalinization” and began to release many of the prisoners who were still held in the camps.
While the gulag system came to an end in Soviet Russia, such re-education camps ply in Communist-ruled China even today to subjugate the Uyghur Muslims and ‘integrate’ them with the majority Han community.
Sudiopto Mondal’s disdain for ‘half of the people of the country’ was based on the fact that they voted for or supported the saffron party and thus more than willing to let them civilise themselves in ‘re-education camps’
Controversial views of The News Minute Editor
And this is not the first time that the Executive Editor of The News Minute has used such drastic examples to further his agenda.
In May 2021, he went on to fearmonger about ‘Hindutva ideologues’ stopping at nothing other than death squads and gas chambers. Sudipto Mondal deliberately chose to downplay the ‘Holocaust‘ that claimed the lives of 6 million Jews to make a snide remark at the ruling dispensaton in India.
On multiple occasions, Sudipto Mondal has demonised the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) as ‘terrorists.’
The Executive Editor of The News Minute has also mocked the Bajrang Dal for rescuing cattle, which were being transported to illegal slaughterhouses. “Bunch of terrorists,” he wrote.
Through his tweets, the Executive Editor of The News Minute appears to be obsessed with caste and the fact that the propaganda outlet has a non-Brahmin chief and a Dalit deputy.
The News Minute has courted several controversies in recent years. In May last year, it attempted to rationalise Islamist slogans calling for the death of Hindus at a PFI rally.
It also tried to justify the killing of a Hindu man by an Islamist on Holi, attacked Hindu traditions under the pretext of covering sexual harassment allegations and peddle fake news on multiple occasions (here, here and here).
