PIB TrackerThe Good Maharaja’s camp is now part of a strategic partnership plan
Nineteen Polish students spent a week in India, beginning at the Jamnagar memorial to the children Nawanagar took in during the Second World War.
What happened
- The second Jamsaheb Memorial Youth Exchange Programme ran from 7 to 14 October 2026 with a 19-member Polish youth delegation visiting Gujarat, Maharashtra and New Delhi.
- It was announced during the Prime Minister’s State visit to Poland in August 2024 and forms part of the Five-Year Action Plan (2024-2028) for the India-Poland Strategic Partnership, with an annual exchange envisaged.
- The delegation visited the Balachadi Polish Children’s Camp Memorial in Jamnagar, commemorating Maharaja Jam Saheb Digvijaysinhji Ranjitsinhji Jadeja, who sheltered, schooled and treated Polish children displaced by the Second World War.
- They also visited the Valivade Polish Refugee Camp Memorial in Kolhapur, which commemorates refuge given to thousands of Polish refugees during and after the war.
- Other stops included Dandi Kutir in Gandhinagar and Kirti Mandir in Porbandar; the Union Minister for Youth Affairs and Sports hosted the delegation in New Delhi.
For Prelims
- Balachadi: the camp near Jamnagar where Jam Saheb Digvijaysinhji, ruler of Nawanagar, took in Polish children evacuated through the Soviet Union during the Second World War. He is honoured in Poland as the Good Maharaja, with a square named for him in Warsaw.
- Valivade: near Kolhapur, the larger of the two settlements, which housed Polish civilian refugees - families as well as children - for years during and after the war, with its own schools, workshops and church.
- Why Polish refugees reached India: Polish citizens deported into the Soviet interior after 1939 were released following the 1941 Soviet-Polish agreement, and evacuated through Iran; British India took in several thousand, which is how a princely state came to run refugee camps.
- India-Poland relations: diplomatic ties date from 1954. The August 2024 visit was the first by an Indian Prime Minister in 45 years and elevated the relationship to a Strategic Partnership with a Five-Year Action Plan (2024-2028).
- Operation Ganga: in 2022 Poland was a principal transit country for India’s evacuation of students from Ukraine, which is the most recent reason the relationship is described in humanitarian terms on both sides.
- Poland’s alignments: a member of NATO since 1999 and the European Union since 2004, and among India’s larger trade and investment partners in Central Europe - the economic reason a youth exchange carries a strategic label.
- Why youth exchanges exist in treaty documents: they are the cheapest durable instrument of soft power - a calendared obligation that survives changes of government and builds a constituency that remembers the relationship.
- Dandi Kutir and Kirti Mandir: the museum at Gandhinagar on the Salt March and the memorial at Gandhi’s birthplace in Porbandar - the standard itinerary by which India presents its freedom struggle to visiting delegations.
For UPSC: A rare case where a GS1 history fact and a GS2 bilateral fact are the same fact. Deploy it on India’s soft power and cultural diplomacy, on India-Europe relations beyond trade, on the role of princely states during the Second World War, and as essay material on how memory sustains a relationship.
What it is NOT: No reciprocal Indian delegation to Poland is mentioned, so the exchange as described runs one way. No cost, no selection criteria for the 19 participants, and no institutional host named in India. Nothing on the other elements of the Five-Year Action Plan - defence, mobility, trade - against which this programme is one line. And no numbers for the history itself: how many children Balachadi took in, how many refugees Valivade held, or what either memorial now holds.
For Mains
Syllabus: GS2.19 · GS1.5 · Linkage L1
Anchor
A 19-member Polish youth delegation completed the second Jamsaheb Memorial Youth Exchange, a programme announced during the Prime Minister’s 2024 visit to Warsaw and built into the India-Poland Five-Year Action Plan, beginning at the memorials to the Polish children and refugees sheltered at Balachadi and Valivade.
Substantiation (data)
The visit ran from 7 to 14 October across Gujarat, Maharashtra and Delhi. Balachadi commemorates Jam Saheb Digvijaysinhji of Nawanagar, known in Poland as the Good Maharaja, who gave Polish children displaced by the Second World War refuge, education and medical care; Valivade in Kolhapur commemorates thousands of Polish refugees housed during and after the war. The programme envisages an annual exchange.
Position
This is soft power with a documentary basis, which is the only kind that works. India usually asserts civilisational goodwill; here there is a verifiable act by a named Indian ruler, a Polish word for it, and two memorials on Indian soil - and a treaty document that obliges both governments to bring young people to see them every year. Converting memory into a calendared commitment is what distinguishes a diplomatic anecdote from an instrument.
Counterpoint
The scale is modest and the traffic one-directional. Nineteen visitors a year, with no Indian delegation to Poland mentioned, is a gesture rather than an exchange, and the release offers no selection process, cost or academic content against which to judge it. A relationship elevated to Strategic Partnership in 2024 will be measured on defence, mobility and trade, none of which appear here.
Way forward
Make it two-way and anchor it institutionally - Indian students to the Polish institutions that keep this history, Polish students to the Balachadi and Valivade material - and publish what the rest of the Five-Year Action Plan has delivered by its midpoint in 2026.
Conclusion
The smallest item in a strategic partnership and the one with the longest memory: a week in India for nineteen Polish students, beginning where their grandparents’ generation was taken in.
Deploys into: Soft power and cultural diplomacy · India-Europe relations · Princely states in the Second World War · People-to-people instruments in treaties
Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports · 2026-10-16 · PRID 2324240 · PIB source ↗