To commemorate the second anniversary of the Rosogolla getting Geographical Indication (GI) tag as ‘Banglar Rosogolla’,sweet shop owners across the Nadia district distributed thousands of the delicious sweet to people for free.
“For most occasions in our state, rosogolla takes its pride of place with other sweets. We love it and we are proud of being residents of the state which invented it,” said a sweet lover.
Mr Tapas Das, a sweet shop owner of Krishnagar and state committee member of the Paschim Banga Mistanya Byabsayee Samity said, “The state government has decided to celebrate 14 November as Rosogolla Divasa. This year, we are distributing thousands of rosogollas to people free to celebrate the day. While celebrating the day, we are also promoting rosogollas with different flavours and tastes”.
The sweet, dipped in sugar syrup, which is a favourite across the country, had for long been at the centre of a bitter tussle between West Bengal and Odisha, with each claiming it as their invention.
Finally, West Bengal was given the ‘Banglar Rosogolla’ tag for the state’s variant of the sweet in November, 2017. In Februrary 2018, Ramesh Chandra Sahoo, chairman of regional development trust in Odisha, filed a petition demanding the cancellation of Bengal’s GI registration of the desert.
The registry however, dismissed the petition on October 31 due to delay by Odisha to present evidence in support of its claim, within the stipulated timeline.
The tussle over where the sweet originated from began in 2015 when Odisha established 20 July as ‘Rasagola Dibasha’ to commemorate its origin.
According to the Odia rhetoric, the rosogolla was invented in Odisha as far back as the 12th century when dumplings made out of ‘channa’ were offered to Lord Jagannath in Puri temples. After Odisha started staking its claim, the Bengal government, too, set up a committee to challenge its neighbour’s stand legally.
Bengal’s GI application had said the rosogolla had been born as the granular danadar or ‘delta rosogolla’ which was modified into the soft, spongy rosogolla that was first seen in Fulia, Nadia, and later went to Bagbazar in Kolkata in the 1860s, said Dipanjan Dey, a research worker on sweets and a college teacher in Krishnagar.
The submission rather lyrically ties the rosogolla’s emergence with the “golden age of Bengal” in the second half of the 19th century and the “glorious flowering” of its people’s “exuberant excellence”. It names confectioner Nabin Chandra Das as the inventor.
Some historians say that Das developed the “spongy rosogolla” in Bagbazar in 1868 after six years of experiment. In November 2017, Bengal was accorded the GI status for ‘Banglar Rosogolla’, which is different in texture and taste from Odisha’s version.
As of now, both states have GI status for their own versions of the dessert.