Refugees: India
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
Polish refugees: 1941-48
The Times of India, Apr 17 2016
At UN, India to display Guj handling of Polish refugees as a model for West
Sachin Parashar
In a world saddled with refugee crises, India will next week put on display at the UN an example from Gujarat to underscore the compassion which has marked its own handling of refugees in the past.
India's mission in New York headed by Syed Akbaruddin will on April 22 inaugurate an exhibition titled -Passage to India: The Wartime Odyssey of Polish Children and the Good Maharaja.Poland PM Beata Szydlo and Union minister Prakash Javadekar will attend the event The exhibition will depict a touching story from World War II of more than 1,000 Polish children, mostly orphans, deported from Poland to Siberia. These children, when allowed to leave Siberia in 1941-42, travelled all the way to India, where Mahara ja Jam Saheb Digvijaysinhji Ranjitsinhji of erstwhile Nawanagar created a new home for them in Balachadi, 25 km from his capital Jamnagar.
“When the world faces crises and large numbers of refugees and migrants seek their new homes, humanism and friendship between nations can go a long way in addressing crises, said Akbaruddin. By projecting Gujarat as a symbol for international goodwill, the government will also hope to undo some of the adverse publicity the state received in the West be cause of the sectarian strife witnessed there in the recent past. The Gujarat government under Narendra Modi in 2013 had helped Poland's ministry of culture and Doordarshan produce a documentary on the Polish children.
The Polish government has always been extremely appreciative of the fact that the Maharaja went out of his way to host the children at a time when India was struggling for its own independence. The Polish camps in Balachadi and Valivade (now in Maharashtra) flourished un til the last of the Polish families left India in 1948.
The Maharaja, who was nephew of renowned Indian cricketer Ranjitsinhji Vibhaji Jadeja, while adopting the Polish children, had famously said, “Do not consider yourself orphans. You are now Nawnagaris and I am Bapu, father of all the people of Nawanagar, so also yours.
The exhibition has been designed by Polish historian Robert Kostro.
Despite its large refugee population, India has not yet signed the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. The exhibition on Polish children will closely follow the successful commemoration of Ambedkar's 125th birth anniversary . This was the first time his birth anniversary had been celebrated at the UN. “It is a matter of great pride for India that Dr Ambedkar's birth anniversary was observed at @UN,“ Modi tweeted after the event.
2014
Jun 22 2015
By the end of 2014, about 60 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide because of persecution, conflict or human rights violation. There are three broad categories of displaced people--refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced. Of the total 14.4 million refugees or people living in such conditions, the largest chunk is in Turkey and Pakistan. Currently, India is home to about 2 lakh refugees, ranking 23rd on a list of countries with the highest refugee population. The largest number of people living in India as refugees, or in refugee-like condition is from Tibet and Sri Lanka. UNHCR's recently released report on forced displacement also states that over 8,000 Indians are living in refugee like situation in the US and Canada.
