Poland Meets India Revisits The Story Of The Maharaja Who Sheltered Polish Refugee Children
The story of Maharaja Jam Saheb of Nawanagar expands into something more personal and creative with the show, Poland Meets India.
Published : January 8, 2026 at 1:54 PM IST
There are evenings that promise culture in the vague, brochure-friendly way: wine, polite applause, and the sense that you should have read more beforehand. Then there are evenings like Poland Meets India, which arrive carrying stories, memories, music, and a demonstration that history is often held together not by treaties or timelines, but by people who decided to be kind when they didn’t have to.
This event brings Poland and India into the same room, not as distant nations nodding at each other, but as two cultures engaged in conversation. Literature meets classical dance. History bumps into music. Storytelling wanders in and finds itself translated into movement. At the centre of the evening is a creative partnership that began, ikkkmprobably and rather beautifully, in Poland. Polish writer and scriptwriter Monika Kowaleczko-Szumowska and Bharatanatyam danseuse Apeksha Niranjan came together through a shared desire to revive a remarkable but often footnoted chapter of World War II history: the story of Polish children who found refuge in India before it gained independence.
This history is not abstract for Apeksha. She is the granddaughter of Wanda Nowicka, one of the Polish children rescued and brought to India during the war. That fact alone gives the evening an emotional gravity that no archive ever could. The story of the “Good Maharaja” of Nawanagar (present-day Jamnagar in Gujarat) Jam Saheb, expands here into something more personal, more human. Through an audiovisual presentation, Monika and Apeksha reflect on how Polish refugee children were welcomed into Indian princely states. Monika also explores how Apeksha’s Polish roots have informed her artistic journey, and how Indian classical dance is received in Europe, especially when it carries the weight of pre-independence Indian history for Polish readers encountering it for the first time. If this all sounds earnest, it is but never heavy. There is curiosity, warmth, and a sense of discovery that makes the evening feel alive rather than reverential.
The evening ends with a solo Bharatanatyam performance by Apeksha Niranjan. She reimagines the Warsaw Mermaid, and offers a choreographic homage to Marie Skłodowska-Curie (Poland’s most celebrated Nobel Prize winner). There will also be classical Indian pieces inspired by mythology and spiritual traditions, revealing parallels between Polish and Indian cultural imaginations.
Poland Meets India forms part of a larger intercultural project titled Maharaja’s Children – A Route of Kindness and Respect, a joint venture by Monika and Apeksha. The project honours not only the Maharaja Jam Saheb of Nawanagar, but also the Maharaja of Kolhapur and the citizens of these princely states who offered shelter, education, and dignity to Polish refugees during one of history’s darkest periods. Using literature, photography, dance, and film, the project builds cultural bridges while asking an uncomfortable but necessary question: how do we respond to human suffering today? In a world marked by ongoing crises, Poland’s recent response to the war in Ukraine becomes a contemporary echo of that same instinct for empathy and solidarity. This intercultural journey will continue to travel to other cities in India, carrying its stories with it.
When: 30 January 2026
Time: 6:30 PM onwards
Where: Marathi Sahitya Mandir, Sector 6, Vashi, Navi Mumbai
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