Rossogolla: The Sweet That Left India Divided
By Rathina Sankari
In the late ’80s, my father returned from a short trip to the City of Joy, Kolkata, erstwhile Calcutta, in Eastern India's West Bengal state. While there was no gift for me in his suitcase, a cylindrical tin caught my eye. When opened it, I noticed pearly, off-white sponge balls floating in a clear syrup. That was my first introduction to rossogolla, as the Bengalis call it, the sweetmeat that left India divided in recent years.
THE TABOO
Made by curdling milk, the soft and crumbly chhena or chhana (cheese curd) is kneaded to a smooth dough and rolled into balls. They are then dropped into a boiling sugar syrup, after which they bloom into squashy globes perfect for biting into. But milk curdling is considered a taboo among Hindu people, who have venerated the cow since Vedic times, so it does come as a surprise that delicacies made of chhena are consumed in the country.
“The cow’s products—milk, ghee and yoghurt—became part of religious rituals since they were pure foods that could be offered to deities,” writes Colleen Taylor Sen in Feasts and Fasts: A History of Food in India.
“The use of milk as an ingredient usually results in a food with the greatest transactional restrictions,” wrote late food scientist and food historian K. T. Achaya in his book Indian Food: A Historical Companion. “Foods altered by fire are not culturally neutral; yet milk and ghee though considered to have already been cooked are taken to be neutral.” According to Achaya, “ Panchagavya a mix of five products of the sacred cow, namely milk, curds, ghee, urine and dung was considered the supreme purificatory material.”
Milk is one of the Hindu sattvik foods. “Sattvika foods are savouring, nutritive and agreeable, conducive to serenity and spirituality,” writes Achaya.
It follows that there are a lot of rituals and beliefs about milk and milk-based products. Born in India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu, I have attended umpteen housewarming ceremonies in its various towns and cities. The event’s main ritual is Paal Kachal, or boiling milk until it overflows, symbolizing prosperity and abundance. On the other hand, spoilt milk is regarded as a bad omen. The acceptance of paneer or cottage cheese by the South Indian palate has been in recent decades. To date, my septuagenarian father-in-law refuses to consume this nonmelting mild cheese that isn’t aged.
“Sweets were always made from mawa, or reduced milk solids, in India, primarily its northern states,” says Ruchi Shrivastava, food show director and food researcher. Barfi, ladoo, peda, halwa and kalakand are a few of the many items prepared using the versatile mawa.
“But the 12th-century book Manasollasa, written by King Somesvara III, has references to a sweet prepared by adding rice flour to split milk residue. The dough was then rolled into balls, cooked in ghee, and then added to sugar syrup. Sour butter milk was used to curdle the milk,” culinary researcher Shubhra Chatterji tells me. While chhena was not unknown in India, it was never offered to deities.
“Split milk products were not accepted in ancient India, so you don’t find temple bhog (blessed food) made in Northern India of split milk,” reasoned Shrivastava.
“In ancient times, cheeses, whether fresh or mature, were probably made with natural rennet, an enzyme that came from animals,” says food historian Pritha Sen. This was another reason probably why cheese would have been considered taboo.
The common understanding across the country is that the art of making chhena was introduced by the Portuguese in India.
“We always knew how to make chhena. Look at the nomadic Gujjar community; they are known for their own version of cheese - Qudam, or the Kashmiri indigenous cheese - Kalari” says food historian Pritha Sen. “It is the arrival of the Portuguese and the Dutch on India’s eastern shores that broke the taboo.”
“The Portuguese had arrived there [in Bengal] first in 1517. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, 5000 Portuguese were living in settlements along the Hooghly engaged in trade in commodities such as sugar and long pepper,” writes Charmaine O’Brien in The Penguin Food Guide to India.
“Bengalis have always been much more open to food influences than any other part of the country. The reservation regarding chhena was finally broken since the Portuguese, and the Dutch employed the locals in their cheese-making factory,” elaborates Sen. “Bengalis learnt ways of making fresh cheese without using natural rennet.”
Soon the chhena became the base for many Bengali sweets like the succulent rossogolla, the creamy and delicate rasmalai floating in condensed milk and the sandwiched cham-cham stuffed with mawa. The eye-catching Bengali sweet sandesh (bringer of good news), cast in molds of conch shells, fish, flowers, dimpled pomegranates were a few of the many creations of the moira (confectioner) in their kitchens. Such is the love for sweets that during the lockdown imposed due to the pandemic, the West Bengal government allowed the sweet shops to operate despite not belonging to the essential food items category.
THE BIG FIGHT
In September 2015, the state government of West Bengal applied for the rossogolla Geographical Indicator tag. A GI designation is awarded to natural, agricultural or manufactured products with a specific geographic origin. This application claimed that the sweet was invented by 22-year-old moira, Nobin Chandra Das, in 1868 in Kolkata.
But the origin of this sweet has always been a bone of contention between West Bengal and its neighbouring state Odisha, both claiming the sweet belongs to their state.
West Bengal’s application came after Dr. Anita Sabat, an Odisha culture researcher who also works for social causes, had already initiated the idea of celebrating the sweet by marking a day in the year as Rasagola Dibasa or Rasagola (as spelled in Odia) Day, early in 2015 on twitter. Odisha is home to the 12th century Shri Jagannath temple in Puri, one of the holy char Dham (four abodes) that most Hindus visit at least once in their lifetime. People congregate in large numbers on Niladri Bije, the concluding day of the famous annual Rath Yatra (chariot festival) of Shri Jagannath (a form of Lord Vishnu, one of the Hindu triads). The year 2015 was unique as it was also the year when the deities’ re-embodiment took place in the Nabakalebara festival.
Rasagola plays an important role in the celebrations of Niladri Bije.
”This is the day when Lord Jagannath gives Goddess Lakshmi a bowl of rasagola to appease her,” says Sabat. The story goes that Goddess Lakshmi was unhappy with Lord Jagannath as he had left her alone in the temple and had gone on a nine-day trip with his siblings. She closes the temple doors, and he is denied entry. To regain her love and pacify her, he presents rasagola. " Every year, on the last day of Rath Yatra, there is a conversation between the divine couple called the 'Lakshmi Narayana Bachanika.' 'Manabhanjana' (appeasing Goddess Lakshmi's anger) by offering rasagola forms a part of the Niladri Bije rituals, after which Shree Jagannath is permitted entry inside the temple. This is the only day when the deities are offered rasagola by sevaks (servitors) and devotees. This has been a continuing tradition for centuries. Rasagola definitely has its origins in Odisha.”
This explanation left Twitter divided and erupted into a battle of words for about four years. The Odias claimed the sweet dumpling was first prepared in their state. They set up a committee of experts to gather evidence and prove to the world that the delicacy was their original pride. By November 2017, the GI tag for rossogolla was awarded to West Bengal. The verdict did not deter the Odias, and they filed their application for the rasagola GI tag in February 2018.
“The Puri temple has always had a vast army of sevaks or sebaks (functionaries) who have been involved with the various rituals associated with Lord Jagannath,” says Sabat. “Today, there are about 120 sevaks as per the Shree Jagannath Temple (Administration) Act 1952, Record of Rights. One of them is the Bhitarachha Mohapatra, who is responsible for opening the temple door every morning. He is also accountable for preparing and offering rasagola to Goddess Lakshmi on behalf of Lord Jagannath on the day of Niladri Bije. The Tadhaukaran (record-keeper of the Temple) sevak clearly mentions rasagola as a special offering by the Bhitarachha Mohapatra sevak. The sweet originated in the temple. It also finds mention in Odia Ramayana, Dandi Ramayana, written in the 15th century by Balaram Das.”
PIECE TOGETHER
While O’Brien associates the round shape of the Rasgulla with Lord Vishnu’s eyes in her book, Sen is skeptical about the theory that the sweet could have its origins in the Puri temple.
“The temple has been extremely conservative and continues to be so,” she says. “So, I have a hard time believing that the sweet made by splitting milk originated in the temple. Rasagola means a round disc in a sweet syrup. The records might state rasagola was made in the temple, but there is no record of split milk used to make the sweet. It could have been made with thickened milk or coconut or lentils and jaggery, as many sweets in Odisha or Bengal are prepared.”
Tracing the history and the evolution of a delicacy becomes a daunting task when there aren’t complete and accurate records. Instead, there are multiple theories that need to be evaluated with several constraints. While Sen does not believe the delicacy originated in the temple, she maintains it has its origins in Odisha and later traveled to Bengal.
“The Vaishnav (a Hindu denomination) movement spearheaded by Shri Chaitanya in the 15th century was primarily responsible for culturally connecting Bengal and Odisha,” she says. “Puri was his base for sometime, so there was a lot of activity in this region. Further, in the 18th century, Calcutta became the capital of British India, attracting Odias to the city for work.”
Then-Calcutta was the hub of commercial activities for the British in India. Opium, sugar, indigo, tea and jute were few of the many goods that set sail from its trading port. The Odias migrated to the city for better prospects.
“Many prized Odia cooks worked in Bengali households,” says Sen. “These cooks brought with them the skill set required to make the milk balls. Nobin Chandra Das created a version of it called sponge rossogolla. The Odia rasagola is delicious but denser… When Das invented this version, no one looked at the back story. They thought it was a fresh product, and Bengal got associated with the rossogolla.”
Sen’s reasoning makes sense, which is further reinforced by O’Brien in her book. In 1930, Das's son Krishna Chandra Das took it a step ahead and bottled these sweetmeats in cans. They were the pioneers in delivering canned rossogolla to the world.
In contrast to the Bengalis, the Odias have not made efforts to popularize their creation. During my travel to Odisha, I could not ignore the sweet shops lining the highway selling lip-smacking goodies. Unlike the Bengali version, these are darker and less chewy. The Odisha Rasagola finally received its GI tag in July 2019. With two variants of the dessert to offer to the world, all that one must do is bite into its history to experience the magic of the ingenious thakur (Odia cooks) and moira.
