The Odisha government's move to get GI status for the Pahala Rosogolla of the state has two neighbours — Bengal and Odisha — sparring over who owns the rights over its invention. Articles and opinions are flying back and forth in the media, with experts being quoted from both sides of the fence. I happened to be one of them and an off-the-cuff remark I had made without realizing its significance has sparked off further debate.
So let me start with what I'd said and work backwards. The Bengal region has been the melting pot of multicultural and multi-ethnic influences. With shifting centres of power and human migration into the region, it continued to evolve into a culture with multi-dimensional influences. Sri Chaitanya's close connections with Odisha and the Jagannath Temple spurred a free flow of ideas and social exchanges, apart from human movement between the two states. One such was the arrival of skilled Odia cooks in Bengal. My thoughts had been that perhaps this migratory population had carried the idea of the rosogolla into Bengal.
I will elaborate on why I say 'idea of the rosogolla'. Our ancient and medieval texts are replete with descriptions of food habits and the kind of food that was prevalent, both ritualistic and otherwise. We find that there was no use of chhana or paneer or any kind of soft cheese set by splitting milk. It is an accepted fact today, bolstered by scholars like KT Achaya, that it was unacceptable to offer to the gods anything fractured or imperfect, that is split or spoilt milk. Milk was held sacred. In Bengal, like the rest of India, we find sweetmeats at that time made of pulses, flours made from rice and wheat, granulated middlings of wheat and rice, coconut, tubers such as sweet potato, candied and dry fruits, thickened milk, jaggery, palm sugar and honey. If we see Bengal's pithes, we will get the huge range that existed — but all sans chhana or cottage cheese. All over north India, there is almost no traditional sweetmeat till today made from cottage cheese and till as late as the early '90s, south of the Vindhyas, paneer was looked upon with suspicion.
It's clear that chhana was a largely unknown and little-used commodity till recent times. Food historians are divided on when chhana made an entry. The French traveller Francois Bernier, who visited India between 1659 and 1666 wrote: "Bengal is celebrated for it sweetmeats, especially in areas inhabited by the Portuguese who are skillful in the art of preparing them...." Therefore some surmise that chhana was inspired by Portuguese Bandel cheese; some say it arrived with marauders from Central Asia. It is not as if our ancient culinary craftsmen were not aware of chhana or the process of making it. Ancient texts describe the curdling of milk with an acidic product to make curds or casein and even the manufacture of a kind of cheese called 'dhandhawat'. But the details are sparse.
We find many names of sweetmeats and confectionery cited in ancient texts correspond to modern-day names of sweets. 'Mithai' which today denotes anything sweet, was actually the name of one genre of sweetmeat made from Bengal gram or moong dal besan, ghee, jaggery or sugar, the predecessor to bonday and later the dorbesh. Similarly the name modak conjures up visions of the round, soft dumpling offered to Ganesha in Maharashtra. However, modak in the eastern region referred to what is known as 'moa' in Bengal, or puffed rice balls dipped in jaggery. There is mention of sandesh in ancient texts. But it was a sweetmeat made from thickened milk and not chhana, and even today, in parts of rural Bengal, sweets made from coconut and sugar are referred to as sandesh.
The above could hold true for the rosogolla too. A rosogolla literally means a 'sphere in syrup'. This sphere could be made from fruits like banana, tubers like the sweet potato, pulses, rice flour, thickened milk, coconut. Do we have evidence to suggest that it was the rosogolla as we know it today, made with cottage cheese? The Jagannath Temple's claims of it being offered to Lord Jagannath as part of bhog may not be imaginary. There could have been something called the rosogolla offered in the 12th century, but could it have been made from split milk? The temple has always been very stringent about customs and rituals and been among the most orthodox in the country. Its bhog rituals are straitjacketed in dos and don'ts to the extent, as one source informs, they do not use potatoes (a foreign vegetable) or salt or haldi or chillies and a list of such ingredients in the bhog cooking. There is no known record of Sri Chaitanya (1486-1534), who lived in Puri for 25 years and had a huge influence on the food habits of Bengal with regard to vegetarianism, having introduced chhana into Bengal. The temple's offerings with regard to sweetmeats are still largely pithes made from pulses and rice flour etc, syrupy sweets like malpua and thickened milk or kheer. The celebrated Chhappan Bhog of the temple has no rosogolla. It is only on the day that Lord Jagannath assumes the Lakshmi-Narayan form that the rosogolla is offered. Could it have been the same one offered nine centuries ago?
Culinary traditions are evolving. The rosogolla Nabin Chandra Das introduced to Bengal in 1866 could well have been an innovation born out of the use of chhana that had crept into Bengal with the Portuguese, based on the idea of the sweet of the same name in Odisha. Today chhana sweets are offered in almost all temples of Bengal. In my opinion, though it cannot be denied that the rosogolla is almost a way of life in Odisha, the state would do well to go back to the temple scriptures to figure out how and when chhana crept into its portals. Lord Jagannath offering it to Goddess Lakshmi does not prove it was the chhana sweet that we know today. While Odisha may have the rights over the name, the question is when did the chhana version first appear? Much like salt and haldi creeping into the bhog, something that has been happening for the past 25-odd years according to temple sources, the crux of the matter is chhana and not the GI status. A GI status could be welcome with a Pahala rosogolla competing with the sponge rosogolla on the same platform as do Champagne and sparkling wine. It means we are coming of age with our artisanal food products. The question is, are we to then believe that chhana or spoilt milk was not really considered inauspicious and turn historical evidence and scholarly discourse on its head?
