A bitter battle is presently going on between two state governments over the
dispute related to the contested origin of the world famous Rasagolla. Researchers in West Bengal and Orissa are racking their brains to get to the bottom of the issue. However, the heavenly Rasagolla transcends all real and imagined boundaries and the craving for it remains intense across states, cultures and traditions. A report by SHABIHA NUR KHATOON
A bitter war has broken out over the origins of the Rasagolla, the white ball of chhena or cottage cheese dipped in sugary syrup that tastes heavenly and has captured a million souls around the globe. The fight is between the Orissa and West Bengal governments, each claiming the ownership of the world famous sweetmeat. The pearly white, or sometimes sombre but always mouth-watering Rasagolla is tied up in a controversy related to its origin. While West Bengal believes it was invented in Kolkata by the iconic confectioner Nobin Chandra Das, Orissa says it was invented in the holy city of Puri way back in the 13th century.
According to historians in Orissa, Rasagolla originated in Puri as khira mohana, which later evolved into the Pahala Rasagolla. It has been traditionally offered as bhog to goddess Lakshmi at Jagannath Temple, Puri. According to the legend Lakshmi gets upset because her husband Lord Jagannath goes on a nine-day sojourn (Rath Yatra) without Her consent. So she locks Jai Vijay Dwar, one of the temple gates, and prevents His convoy from reentering the sanctum sanctorum. To appease Her Lord Jagannath offers her Rasagolla. This ritual, known as Bachanika, is part of the Niladri Bije observance, which marks the return of the deities to the temple after Rath Yatra.
Jagannath Temple scholars such as Laxmidhar Pujapanda and researchers like Jagabandhu Padhi state that the tradition has existed since the 12th century when the present-day temple structure was first built. Pujapanda states that the Niladri Bije tradition is mentioned in Niladri Mahodaya which is dated back to the 18th century by Sarat Chandra Mahapatra. According to Mahapatra several temple scriptures, which are over 300 years old, provide evidence of Rasagolla being offered as part of rituals in Puri.
According to myth Pahala (a village on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar) had a large number of cows. The village would produce excess milk, and the villagers would throw the stuff away when it got spoilt. When a priest from Jagannath Temple saw this he taught the villagers the art of curdling, including the Rasagolla recipe. Pahala went on to become the biggest market for chhena-based sweets in the area.
Historical evidence unearthed by researchers and scholars in the recent past leave very little room for doubt that the sweet voted India’s National Dessert in a nationwide survey done by MUDRA for Outlook magazine in 2010 had its origins in neighbouring Orissa at least a century and half before 1868 when Nobin Chandra Das is supposed to have ‘invented’ it in his shop in Kolkata’s Sutanati.
Researchers have unearthed sufficient evidence to prove that the tradition of offering Rasagolla (that is how it is spelt and pronounced in Orissa) by Lord Jagannath to Goddess Lakshmi on the day of Niladri Bije (the day when the deities return to their abode after the annual Rath Yatra) is at least 300 years old and thus much older than the 150-year-old history of the Bengali Rasagolla.
The spongy white Rasagolla is believed to have been introduced in present-day West Bengal in 1868 by Kolkata-based confectioner Nobin Chandra Das. Das started making Rasagolla by processing the mixture of chhena and semolina in boiling sugar syrup in contrast to the mixture sans semolina in the original Rasagolla in his sweet shop at Sutanuti (present-day Baghbazar). His descendants claim that his recipe was original, but according to another theory he modified the traditional Orissa Rasagolla to produce a different variant.
Yet another theory prevails that Rasagolla was a part of Bengali culinary culture and Das later popularised it. In Banglar Khabar (1987), food historian Pranab Ray states that a man named Braja Moira had introduced Rasagolla in his shop near Calcutta High Court in 1866, two years before Das started selling the dish. In 1906 Panchana Bandopadhyay wrote that Rasagolla was invented in the 19th century by Haradhan Moira, a Phulia-based sweet-maker who worked for the Pal Chowdhurys of Ranaghat. According to Mistikatha, a newspaper published by West Bengal Sweetmeat Traders Association, many other people prepared similar sweets under different names such as Gopalgolla (prepared by Gopal Moira of Burdwan district), Jatingolla, bhabanigolla and Rasagolla.
In 1930 the introduction of vacuum packing by Nobin Chandra’s son Krishna Chandra Das led to the availability of canned Rasagollas which made the dessert popular outside Kolkata, and subsequently outside India. Krishna Chandra’s son Sarada Charan Das established KC Das Private Ltd in 1946.
In 2015 the Orissa government initiated a move to get Geographical indication (GI) status for Rasagolla made at Pahala. On July 30 the people of Orissa celebrated ‘Rasagolla Dibasa’ (Rasagolla Day) to reaffirm Orissa as the place of the dish’s origin.
In August West Bengal decided to legally contest Orissa’s move to obtain GI Status. The Science and Technology department of the West Bengal government also started the process to get its own GI status for the dessert.
The battle between the two neighbours over the spongy sweet is not new. But it got a fresh lease of life after the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) department of the Orissa government initiated a move to get Geographical Indication (GI) status, (which identifies a product as originating from a certain location and assures its distinctive quality) for the famous Pahala Rasagolla made at Pahala village.
As things appear at present there is a long and bitter battle ahead as the Orissa government pursues the move to get GI status for Rasagolla. Claims and counter-claims would be made by both the contending parties. But if the Orissa government has its way, which looks more than likely, it would mark the fall of another Bengali bastion.
On July 30, 2015 on the day of Niladri Bije, a social media campaign started using hashtag #RasagolaDibasa and it later became a main-stream celebration as the maiden day celebrating Rasagolla’s origin in Orissa. The hashtag trended for a few hours all over India as the second most popular Twitter hashtag.
Kolkata-based food historian Haripada Bhowmik who specialises in Bengali sweets says that the belief that Rasagolla originated in Orissa is misplaced. “The spongy white delicacy called Rasagolla is made from chhena, which has distinct characteristics. It’s the unquestioned truth that Nobin Chandra Das (who called himself the inventor of Rasagolla) was the pioneer of the sweetmeat. Even Oriya leader Biju Patnaik acknowledged Nobin Chandra Das’s Rasagolla and its Bengali origins,” Bhowmik says.
“The Oriya variety of yore, he argues, is the “kheer mohana Rasagolla” of Pahala which is in no way similar to the chhena Rasagolla of Bengal,” adds Bhowmik.
Bhowmik’s recent book Rasogolla: Banglar Jogot Matano Abishkar (Rasogolla: Bengal’s World Famous Invention) has extensive information provided by KC Das and Balaram Mallik-Radharaman Mallik. The author says citing records that ‘kheermohan’ was made of kheer and not ‘chhana’ (in Bengali) used in making Rasagolla originally invented by Nobin Chandra Das.
“Who can take away the right of Baghbazar as the birthplace of Rasagolla which then went on to conquer the world? Who can ignore that Sri Ramkrishna Paramahansa went into a trance after savouring Rasagolla in Dakshineswar temple. Who can forget Girish Ghosh buying Rasagolla in an earthen pot from a shop in Baghbazar near his residence,” Bhowmik adds.
“Without the use of ghee a sweet is prepared once a year with chenna as per the Sri Mandir tradition and that is called Rasagolla. The GIA is not accepting the claims made in the holy texts; it is supporting what the common people are saying. Not only the Pahala Rasagolla but the ones prepared at different places in the state have different tastes. The controversy is not a new thing. In 1988 KT Achaya wrote that Rasagolla is a Bengali sweetmeat and before Achaya, Oriya writer Nabin Chandra Das wrote that Rasagolla is a 150-year-old dessert. During Lord Cornwallis’ reign when the milk got sour they extracted cottage cheese from it and made Rasagolla. But there is no evidence for this.
“Lord Cornwallis was the governor general from 1786-93 and if we consider this fact then Rasagolla is 225 years old. But it was offered to Lord Jagannath as bhog in medieval times and there is proof of that. In 2011 an article was published by Samrat Nandi in Saptahika Bartaman where he claimed that Rasagolla originated in Orissa. In his opinion it is the Oriya cooks who went to Kolkata and made Rasagolla famous there. This was supported by researchers Biswabijoy Mitra and Pritha Sen. Professor Utpal Ray Chowdhury of Jadavpur University said that offering Rasagolla as prasad to Lord Jagannath is nearly a 700-year-old practice, which fact was also published in a British newspaper. It’s a fact because when the Ganga dynasty rulers offered sweets as prasad to the Lord but proof is lacking in respect to what preceded them. The Penguin Food Guide tells us that Rasagolla originated in Orissa but it prospered in Bengal due to its commercial success there,” says Surendra Kumar Mishra, researcher, Jagannath culture.
Surya Narayan Rathsharma, Sri Jagannath culture researcher based in Puri says, “Rasagolla was invented in the holy city of Puri back in the 13th century. The Hindu female deity Lakshmi is served Rasagolla on the last day of the annual Rath Yatra festival. Rasagolla has been part of Rath Yatra rituals ever since Jagannath Temple came into existence in the 12th century. More than 15 quintals of Rasagollas were offered to Goddess Lakshmi on Niladri Bije, a ceremony that marks the end of the chariot festival. Rasagolla is in our culture and tradition. You can call sandesh (a dessert made of chenna), a Bengali dish, but not the Rasagolla. Rasagolla and chhena poda are our sweet dishes.”
