UN exhibition on Indian maharaja who offered refuge to Polish orphans

“Organised jointly by the Permanent Missions of Indian and Poland to the UN, the exhibition, ‘Passage to India-The Wartime Odyssey of Polish Children and the Good Maharaja’, will display stories of displaced Polish children, mostly orphans, finding refuge in India during World War II, offering a message of “humanism”. 

The exhibition depicts the “touching story” from the times of the great war when more than 1000 Polish children, mostly orphans, deported from occupied Poland to Siberia and got a new home in India due to the generosity of Maharaja Jam Saheb Digvijaysinhji Ranjitsinhji of Nawangar. 

“When allowed to leave camps in 1941/1942, they travelled all the way to India where the Maharaja created a new home for them at a “difficult time when the world was at war” and India itself was struggling for its independence, a statement on the Indian mission’s website said. The Polish camps flourished in India until the end of the second world war and the last of the Polish families left the country in 1948. 

“This beautiful account of compassion is surprisingly meaningful nowadays, when the world faces crises and large numbers of refugees and migrants seek their new homes. It shows that humanism and friendship between nations can go a long way in addressing crises,” it read. 

In February, the Indian mission under the aegis of Permanent Representative Syed Akbaruddin along with Department of Public Information’s Remember Slavery Programme had organised the exhibition ‘Africans in India: From Slaves to Generals and Rulers’ at the world body’s headquarters. 

The exhibition told the history of enslaved East Africans in India, known as Sidis and Habshis, who rose to positions of military and political authority. Through colourful photographs and texts, the exhibition had conveyed that success of the enslaved East Africans was a “testimony to the open-mindedness” of Indian society, in which they were a small religious and ethnic minority. 

The exhibition, which shed light on the slave trade in the Indian Ocean and the history of Africa and its diaspora in India, was part of the observance of the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, commemorated every year on March 25.