"Our Rasagolla is a unique entity and has a history and tradition of its own. It is associated with the tradition of Lord Jagannath and is being served during rituals of the holy trinity since last 800 years. So we have decided to file a separate application demanding GI tag for Odisha's Rasagola," Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Secretary LN Gupta said after a high-level meeting.
On the other hand, the delay in Odisha's attempt to seek the GI tag for the sweet has been severely criticized by the Opposition party.
Congress leader and Opposition party Chief Whip Tara Prasad Bahinipati said "It has been two years since Odisha waged a battle against West Bengal for earning the tag but now Bengali brothers have achieved the tag while our state government is still in slumber."
On the other hand, Kendrapara MP Baijayant Panda said that there should be a 'test of taste' of the sweet delicacy from both Odisha and West Bengal as there is not one but many varieties of Rasagola found at several places like Pahala, Salipur in Odisha itself with centuries old tradition behind each of them.
Panda in a tweet said, "The GI tag is only for the spongy, usually canned, variety? We should arrange a head-to-head tasting against the succulent, brown, nuclear-attack-on-the-taste-buds varieties from Salipur, Pahalo & dozens of other places in Odisha with centuries' longer tradition."
https://youtu.be/foLnmYfiltg
Even at this stage, the state government appears to be in no hurry to comply with the requirements for the GI tag. It even refuses to acknowledge that time is running out. Finance minister Sashi Bhusan Behera is ‘hopeful’ that Odisha would get the GI status for rasagola by Niladri Bije next year, thus giving a full year’s breathing space to the government. He even made a virtue out of the fact that the GI registry in Chennai had not rejected Odisha’s case yet!
MSME minister Parfulla Samal went one up on the Finance minister, boasting that the government would provide the clarifications on 14 counts sought by the GI office by the first week of August ‘ahead of the deadline’! For those not familiar with the sequence of events, let it be made clear that the ‘deadline’ was July 22. It was the state government which had sought an extension of the deadline by one month because it had dozed off again. It would be interesting to wait and see if the minister was serious this time or was just buying time till the issue crops up again as he has done repeatedly in the past.
After receiving flak for failing to get its act together even as the Bengal government pipped it to the post, the Odisha government moved the application for GI tag to ‘Odishara rasagola’ only on February 23, two and a half years after the move was initiated. Since it took so long to move the application, it was natural for people to expect that the government must have done a thorough job and presented a watertight case. But the fact that the GI registry asked for clarification on no less than 14 counts proved that the state government had filed a shoddy application hurriedly without doing its homework just a day ahead of the by-election in Bijepur for some political mileage. Bengal, in contrast, got GI tag for its rosogulla in one go without having to clarify on anything. Thank god for small mercies, it hasn’t yet termed the rejection as yet another case of ‘central neglect’!
If senior journalist Asit Mohanty, whose services had been requisitioned by the government to prepare Odisha’s case to be presented before the GI Registry, is to be believed, Odisha has a foolproof case to get GI status for rasagola. He cites the Dandi Ramayana to claim that the tradition of rasagola being offered to Lord Jagannath on Niladri Bije day is at least six centuries old while Bengal rosogulla has a history of less than two centuries. Mohanty’s claim has been corroborated by other scholars and experts on the Jagannath cult. And yet, it was Bengal that walked away with the GI tag while Odisha was left twiddling its thumbs.
With the government failing miserably in convincing the GI office about its claim, the people had no choice but to do what they can to buttress Odisha’s claim on rasagola. Like the previous two years, #RasagolaDibas was trending on Twitter on Niladri Bije on Wednesday. Apart from love for the syrupy sweet, the posts on the social media reflected anger, frustration and helplessness at the gross apathy of the government. Going by the reactions expressed, most people have given up on the government’s ability to take the battle to its logical conclusion. If Odisha still gets the GI tag for its rasagola, it would be nothing short of a miracle.
Odisha had everything going for it as it entered the race with Bengal to get GI status for rasagola. But the government that boasts of a ‘not talk, but hard work’ credo managed the incredible feat of conceding a walkover to its neighbor. It was a classic case of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory!
(DISCLAIMER: This is an opinion piece. The views expressed are author’s own and have nothing to do with OTV’s charter or views. OTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same).
But the point is not if Odisha still has a chance of getting its due, but what has the state government been doing for over two years to get its rightful claim acknowledged by the intellectual property authorities at Chennai who hand out the GI status? After all, rasagola snowballed into a major controversy only after the state government made the first move to get GI status for the famous Pahala rasagola in July 2015. All that the state government has to show by way of efforts to take it to its logical conclusion in the two years and more since then is the formation of three committees. Eminent literary critic and researcher Asit Mohanty, an acclaimed authority on the subject, submitted his 100-page report backed with irrefutable proof, of the existence of rasagola and its ritual offering to Lord Jagannath on Niladri Bije at least since the 15th century, if not earlier, in July last year. A little enquiry by this columnist revealed that the report initially commissioned by the Science & Technology department, which cites Balaram Das’ Dandi Ramayana and other literary works of the time to make its case, was later sent to the Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSME) department which, in turn, assigned the job of preparing the presentation to the GI authorities to the Central Tool room & Training Centre (CTTC). And there the matter has rested for the last 16 months without anyone in the government being able to say how long it will take to make its case. As Odisha kept twiddling its thumb, West Bengal moved purposefully to seal the GI norm for its rosogulla. It was the old story of the hare and the tortoise all over again!
A group of spirited Odias meanwhile launched an online campaign to celebrate ‘Rasagola Day’ on Niadri Bije, the day when the deities return to their abode after their annual nine-day sojourn to their aunt’s place during the Rath Yatra in Puri. With Odia youth joining the bandwagon with gusto, the campaign did get considerable traction on social media. The event trended on Twitter for two consecutive years. Unfortunately though, GI status is given on the basis of hard, verifiable proof and not on the strength of a social media campaign. Odisha’s case has thus stood exactly where it was in July, 2015 while Bengal has worked diligently to get what it wanted.
There is little doubt that the Naveen Patnaik government has a lot of explaining to do about going into deep slumber after an initial burst of activity. With all the historical evidence to back Odisha’s case already painstakingly put together by Asit Mohanty, all it had to do was to move the GI office in Chennai with the relevant documents. If it was anything other than plain callousness that has delayed the submission of the state’s case, the state government is not forthcoming with any explanations.
Social media saw an outpouring of hurt pride all day with most Odias understandably venting out their anger on the government for its gross apathy that led to this ‘defeat’. A few cloaked their disappointment in satire with one Facebooker saying now that we have lost the ‘battle’ for rasogola, we should move fast to get the GI tag at least for our very own ‘gulgula’. For reasons that have their genesis in history, what hurt most Odias was the fact that the ‘defeat’ came at the hands of Bengalis.
But then wasn’t it the Bengalis who had once said that Odia was not a language at all? In a supreme irony, the same ‘non-language’ has now got the classical language status, one of only six Indian languages to get this coveted tag, while Bangla is nowhere in the picture. So, let us throw our despondency out of the window and put pressure on our government to move fast – and with precision – to get not just a GI tag for our very own rasagola, but to get recognition for everything else that rightfully belongs to us. After all, we have history on our side and no one – just no one – can change that.
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