Odisha and West Bengal’s bitter war over the rasgulla ended in a sweet draw, with Odisha finally securing a geographical indication tag for its localised version of the delicacy, which has now been certified as the ‘Odisha Rasagola’. In celebration of this long awaited victory, Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik tweeted saying, “This mouthwatering culinary delight made of cottage cheese, loved by Odias across the world, is offered to Lord Jagannath as part of bhog since centuries.”
The neighbouring states have been engaged in a sticky legal battle over the origin of the Rasgulla since June 2015, and the battle took a turn for the worse when Odisha’s former Science and Technology Minister Pradip Kumar Panigrahi set up several committees in 2015 to trace the origin of the sweet delicacy. They even went a step further to declare July 30 as ‘Rasagolla Dibasa’, to celebrate its origin. As a response to this action, the Bengal government, too, set up a committee and decided to fight the Odisha government’s claims legally, and claimed that the sweet was invented by Nobin Chandra Das, a famous sweetmeat-maker in 1868 at his Bagbazar residence in Kolkata. The Odia population debunked this claim by citing the tradition that dated back to the 12th century, which involved offering the sweet dumpling at the Puri Jagannath Temple.
Food is as close as can be to becoming a religion in our country, and while this win may seem insignificant to many, it is surely a huge moment for fans of the ‘rasgulla’ across the state of Odisha.
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