Ishita Dey, "Sweet Excess: Crafting Mishti in Bengal" (Routledge, 2025)

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The book traces the culture of sweetness by examining the material and symbolic significance of sweetness not only by tracing the changing meanings of labor behind the making of misty, which is rooted in cast and religious hierarchies, but also by understanding them through legal registers that view sweets as either essential or non-essential. Shitade is an assistant professor at the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, South Asian University, New Delhi. A research areas include labor, food, the senses, migration and technology. She has previously co anchored an art research project titled Smells of the City, focusing on Delhi, which was supported by the Kiranada Museum of Art. More recently, she has begun anchoring a research project on travel and co anchors, a podcast titled Travel Matters. She is an editorial board member of the journal Society and Culture in South Asia and Gastronomica. Her work on food has been published and edited volumes including the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets and journals such as Contributions to Indian Sociology, South Atlantic Quarterly, The Senses and Society and Gastronomica. She has co-edited the book's sustainability of rights after globalization and co-author Beyond Kolkata, The Distopia of Urban Imagination. To talk more about her book, I am John Vaishitadeh. Dr. Deh, welcome to New Books Network and congratulations on the book. Thank you. The central question that you ask is why people from the shared geography of West Bengal and Bangladesh, a region that has been ravaged by food rists and once at the heart was at the heart of sugar capitalism are drawn excessively to Sweets. What makes Sweets an obsession or rather an excess? Most of the discussion will be spent getting into answers to this, however I would like to focus on the question itself. So you have been researching the social aspects of Sweets and Sweets in Bengal and West Bengal, sorry, in Bangladesh and West Bengal for almost a decade now. Could you take us more back more than a decade and let us know what inspired you to ask this question and relate it to the various aspects in your research? Well, that's a very good question, you know, Shattaki to begin with because when I began the research, it was primarily where Michael Kronel in his book, Sweet Invention, was leaving. You know, he had visited Kolkata and I write about it in the acknowledgement of the book and I kept on telling him that there is something about the labor form that is associated with sweet making that needs deeper interrogation. So when I started the work back in 2010 as a grad student in the Nellies School of Economics under the supervision of Professor Rajni Parvallar, my questions were mostly to do with the production. And as I moved forward as a in this journey of understanding the craftsmanship of sweetness, I realized that the Bangla word that we use to refer to the confectioners, the Moira, has also been a very important middle caste group. And by the time I was finishing my thesis, I had this question unanswered, can there, you know, who is a Moira beyond a Hindu caste group? Do we refer to this same, is there a semantic collapse also in Opar Bangla from my positionality? In the book, you know, as you may have noticed many times, I purposefully use Opar Bangla, the other side, also keeping in mind that there are very everyday experiences of borders and borderlands that have shaped who we are as a society, the food that we eat, the food that divides us, and the boundaries that we end up creating through craftsmanship of food as well, including sweet. So when I concluded my dissertation in 2016, I did not have an answer to this question that beyond the Hindu concessioner, who are the people who are making sweets? Because most of the fieldwork that I did as part of the PhD project was confined to a Hugli district, was confined to Nodia district, and they were mostly Hindu owned sweet shops. But even in Calcutta, there are sweet shops that are owned by Muslim confeccioners. And this probed me really to think of a bigger project, and that's why my journey to Opar Bangla from my vantage point, the other side began. And when I started, and I opened the book with this vignette, that when I started my fieldwork, I had to also socialize myself in the way in which people consume sweets in Dhaka. So, and I opened the book with this vignette, that where a sweet shop owner is cautioning me that don't count the heads of the household and order sweets, but there's a minimum quantum of sweets that you need to order while visiting a household in Bangla. That really brought me to think that, you know, how is it that the, that, and this kind of, you know, triggered a shift in the question that I think there's much more to study beyond the production to really understand the cultural landscape of sweetness. Right. What makes us obsessed with sweets where we have sweets that are priced at rupees one, rupees one, right. Two sweets which can go up to, you know, in thousand rupees, right. This, this to capture this, I think it's very important to, and this is where I kind of reframe the question that here's a geography that has been ravaged by famine, food insecurity, yet, you know, there's a certain obsession with sweetness that we carry. And who carries that obsession? How does it get reflected in the production of sweet making. Right. Yeah. So through the, through looking at the cultural landscape of sweetness, you're trying to look at how sweetness is constructed and consumed. And the book sort of explores various sub themes. For instance, there are each independent, each actor serves as an independent introduction with its own conceptual framework. But there's an overarching analytical tool that you have used to describe sweetness and that is through the concept of excess. And could you explain how the concept of excess is connected to the practice of sweetness, both in its creation and its consumption and especially how you are sort of distinguishing it, distinguishing sweets as not an item of luxury or abundance. For instance, it's not a matter of points list consumption, but it is an excess. Yeah. Yes. You know, and this is it's it's it's it makes me you know, like when I was when I started with this question that you know, how do we really look at this cultural landscape of sweetness. It became important that how do sweets get represented in sweet shops. How do sweets gets represented in domestic rituals right across our faiths and also third a very important site was how a sweet, you know, sold in fairs restaurants all of this places right now. If you really look at our sweetness in itself right and there are many scholars before me also has worked on sweetness when you really think about sweets. Is it very essential to diet? Yes and no. If you really think about, you know, it's nutritional value and this is where food studies and this is one sort of question I wanted to pose that, you know, how do you really look as a food item beyond necessity? You know, because the necessity luxury framework has dominated, you know, many ideas and particularly say things like chocolate, wine, etc. And here my idea of excess really came from the fact that how do we understand that particular person who is wanting to buy a rupee, like why do sweet shops produce rupee, a sweet surprised as rupee one? And the same sweet shop is producing the same category of sweet surprised as rupee 25, which means that there is a way in which the sweet shops wants to cater to the affordability of people and keeping in mind that sweets really kind of inform the celebrations, right? Now if you really think about the celebrations, it's very important to remember that it is not only in the, it's a, it's a not only an important part in a species, a species of occasions of various spectrums, even in death rituals. And here I really thought that the framework of excess really becomes a very useful lens and the way I want to describe, you know, the way I have used the conceptual framework of excess in the book is really to pay attention to that. How do we really think of a, really think of a consumption and production which is built on cultural registers of excess, right? So one, you know, there is a sort of a co-construction of sweetness at that the production of the sweet shops are constantly imbi-bing as they're going along, right? Let me give you one example of registers of excess, which I don't discuss in the book, you know, extensively. It's only in Bengal you can have a very category of sweets that is available in sweet shops today is known by the range of diabetic sweets, right? Now on one hand, you know, I have talked about the diabetic sweets in the book as where the sweet shops are responding to the health needs. Now if you really look at it from the lens of excess, it is constructed with an intent, it is produced with an intent that nobody should be deprived, even if you are even if you are suffering from diabetes, is there a sweet taste I can give it to you because that there is a sort of a, as if in our life can't go without sweetness, right? And here I tried to take inspiration from, you know, Gail Rubin's interpretation of Marx where, you know, when Marx was talking about the wages of a worker, right? Marx was also taking into account that the wages of a worker in Britain should be able to take into account the price of a beer and similarly for the worker in, you know, in France, they should be able to afford, you know, wine, right? So when we really think about, you know, like, and this is where, you know, excess kind of allows us to understand the cultural landscape of sweetness, both in its material embeddedness of life, right? You know, that how is it? And in every culture, it could be different food items and this is also a notch to think about, you know, like sweet excess is a notch to also think about, you know, what are the excesses through which, excesses that inform the cultural gastroomic landscape of different geographies, right? In some of the society, it could be something else, you know, it may not be sweet, right? And some of the society, it could be a liquor, it could be in some of the society, it could be a variety of red, you know? So when you, or milk, now when it comes to sweetness, and the way I have used excess is both to talk about to bring three registers of excess in conversation. And the three registers of excess that I have tried to bring into conversation is definitely the cultural registers of excess, right? This is one part that comes about in the first two chapters of the book. And alongside, I have also kind of tried to bring in, you know, what are the ways in which what are the aestheticization of excess, right? And the sustenance tropes in the imagination of excess. The sustenance tropes in the imagination of excess is the diabetic sweets, right? Where you do not, where the sweetmaker, where the confectioners do not want to deprive even someone who is suffering from diabetes, so sweets are not your enemy, is there a way in which we can blend in? Or, you know, if you take into account the chocolate mishty, which is basically, you know, embracing the cocoa as a sort of a sweetening ingredients. So using these three registers of culture, aestheticization and sustenance tropes, what I want to kind of argue here is that that is there a way in which like how have those sweetmakers really use the cultural logic to make a place for themselves? It is important to remember because if we all remember one of the recent attacks, you know, one of the recent criticisms that was there during COVID was when sweet shops were allowed to remain open, right? You know, during the pandemic, during the lockdown, right? Now it's an island, even you really think about, you know, that in 60s, there was a milk, there were several two control orders that kind of, you know, wanted the sweet shops to be shut down because they were thought as a culprits to divert the supply of milk and chana. And it is true because much of the milk and chana actually is very informal and sweet shop owners can pay a higher price compared to, you know, other consumers. And so things have drastically changed after white revolution, which I do discuss in the book as an introduction. But at the same time, how do you really look at these sustenance tropes where in 60s, the sweet shops are coming under attack? And in 2020, 14 days into the lockdown, the sweet shop owners, you know, are the sweet shops are being allowed to remain open. So that the milk supply does not go waste. And this also brings us the another angle of excess that, you know, when you really look at excess, excess is also, you know, there is a way in which to go beyond the debates on waste, right? And how do we really understand, you know, excess in relation to the supply chain? Right, absolutely. So, I think now before going ahead into how this sweetness or excess is constructed as you have laid the conceptual framework, I would like to spend some time with the material itself, which are sweets. And for instance, the way your work serves as an exemplary model of combining sources and examining the everyday practices of sweet making and consumption. You also, as you pointed out, you make room for sweets priced at rupees one and beyond, right? 2000s. So what was the process of mapping sweets, especially what were the considerations of including excluding certain sources? Because you have used multiple sources and this is just to give our audiences an understanding of what kind, what entails sweets and how, of course, the entire process behind the material, which goes into it also contributes to the central argument of excesses. So could you just go through the processes of mapping sweets in both Epar and Opar mangola? Okay. So as I told in the beginning, you know, the fieldwork, I began the fieldwork in 2010. The book is a culmination of fieldwork in various intermittent phases, fieldwork and archive will work in various intermittent phases between 2010 to 2019. Chapter two of the book, Following Sweetness, I really thought that it is, it is, as you rightly pointed out, that, you know, that how do you really understand, where do you begin the journey of, you know, understanding sweet making? I really thought that, you know, given that there's a lot of work available on Calcutta and Dhaka, this two, you know, centers of, you know, a shared imagination of Bengal, I really thought that, you know, it is important to really move in and out of how the periphery has shaped the sweet landscape of the core. And this informed my choice of the field sites, across West Bengal and Bangladesh. Now, before I tell you about the districts where I have been and how I went about choosing those districts, it is very important to understand that for me the landscape there are many ways to look at sweetness, right? For me the material was Mishdi, right? Mishdi is the and the way I understand Mishdi is it is to really kind of think through the food that is produced in the sweet shops. It's and the word Mishdi, it is important to remember is also used as a feminine attribute just like in the case of in Japan. Now, where all I have done the field work, there is a dedicated section in the book where I really show the range of sweet shops that exist and I say that the sweet shops can be divided into various segments. One is of course the neighborhood sweet shops, sweet shops that are in and around the temple complex as well as in both sides of the Bengal and the names of the sweet shops also kind of play a very very important role and where I think the sensorial landscape of the sweet shops really sort has been very central to understanding the materiality of sweets. Now, the way I began was in 2010 to 2012, I did from actually October 2010 to March 2012, I conducted a observation across three sites in West Bengal. One is Jolly Bhara Shudja Moodo, a semi mechanized sweet shop in Chandanagore in Hugley District, Bijayamayara, a traditional sweet shop in Krishna Gaur in Nodia District with that point in time it had no refrigeration facilities and the quality control you know and the Ksidas laboratory particularly in Bangalore where where I got to observe the quality control laboratory. So, this was the fieldwork that informed in 2010 to 2012 then by the time you know I was doing this fieldwork, apparently the archives that I got to study around 2010 to 2012 where the caste association newsletters of the Moodokh Maira caste association okay as well as few cookbooks. By the time you know by 2015-2016 I engaged extensively with the campaign the Cadbury Mishni, this was a very exciting campaign that was launched by the chocolate giant Cadbury as we all know with one of the leading newspaper houses of the eastern India, Anandbhazad Patrika and the Cadbury Nishni campaign was actually you know was at its peak when I was ending my PhD fieldwork in 2012 but I returned to this campaign in 2015-2016 where I actually conducted fieldwork with sweet shop owners who had participated in this campaign to understand the phenomenon of Cadbury Mishni. From December 2017 you know I actually started planning my fieldwork in Bangladesh and prior to that 2017 and 2018 they were you know by the end of you know December 2017 they were rushed to have GI applications so there was a year there was a six month long you know project that I engaged in with the support of my then you know workplace Amitkar University where I studied the GI applications GI registry office you know in where I consulted the archives of the GI registry in Chennai and December 2017 and June to July you know 2018 where it was when I spent extensively sometime in Bangladesh. So if you really look at the sweet landscape as I told you 2010-2012 I was looking at Chandanagura and Nodia district when I entered Bangladesh I really thought this was an opportunity to look at the northern Bengal from the side of Bangladesh. Now when you and this is also in Bangladesh also I decided to stay away from to understand Dhaka right but also to kind of move away and to look at the Ratshahi division and so what I did was actually in Ratshahi division you know I really looked at the five out of the eight districts in Ratshahi division I have I conducted fieldwork in five districts Ratshahi, Nathur, Naugao, Chapai, Nababganj and Bogura. Now each of these districts and there's a beautiful and I would really encourage you know the listeners there's a there's a sweet shop in Bangladesh called Sweet South Bengal which had this beautiful maps of each of the districts what are the sweet you know sweets what are the sweets that are famous in each of the districts that really gave me sort of an idea to actually you know explore the explore Ratshahi and see what are the potentialities. Interestingly I must also recall here unlike in West Bengal where I did the fieldwork in the festive season October 2010 is when the October is the autumn all the festivals you know actually come the Diwali, the Durga Pooja, Jagadhar Pripuja so a lot of you know local specific festivals are there till about you know March right in the context of Bangladesh I specifically chose to study the summers okay one it coincided with Ramzan in a second it is also to get a sense of that do people eat sweets in summer and Bogura was a revelation Bogura is known for the fermented sweet dish called curd and the amount of curd that gets produced and sold all over in the name of Bogura doi is quite fantastic you know someone should just have a project only on Bogura doi and its productions apply network coming back to my project you know out of the eight districts as I told you I did feel work in five districts Ratshahi Nato Nogau Chapa Nava Gons and Bogura what was interesting here is that in Chapa I both in Chapa and in both in Chapa and particularly in I actually made sweet makers whose families confectioner families whose families you know migrated whose families you know in this Ratshahi division I met actually families whose families had migrated from Mushidabad district then Mushidabad district of West Bengal to you know at the time of partition to you know Ratshahi division so I think when I started you know interacting with interlocutors particularly the sweet shop owners families this also kind of gave me a chance to really understand you know the question that I have had unanswered if after the end of PhD that you know is the category of a moira only applicable to the Hindu caste groups or who is a you know Muslim moira and the scenario got actually more complicated when I really started understanding the production process of the semantic differences that are used for worker hierarchies right so the way I observed the sweet shops was you know whenever the owners allowed me to observe the makings of a sweet I was present at the workshop observing the making of sweets so I really it was really a learning experience to watch the techniques absorb the sensorial landscape but as you know that many of the sweet shops also kind of the bulk of the productions happens in the night and due to my own positionality as a woman where I did not get access to observe the workings of a sweet shop in the night and this is where the sensory landscape become a cue to understand what was the production the night before so and when I went to Bangladesh I kind of also realized that you know there is a range of cookbooks I did not have access to and all of this along with apart from sweet shops in Bangladesh I also studied the Pitaghors right what are Pitaghors Pitaghors is a place which is dedicated to the making and selling of Pitaghors and when I was doing my fieldwork in December 2017 in Bangladesh I still remember you know I was I stayed in Asia at the Society guesthouse and the first meal I had after a very delayed flight was Bapa Pitta and the first you know a person who agreed to be interviewed in Bangladesh you know as per my field I recorded was a person who actually made a Bapa Pitta as a seasonal migrant laborer right this also kind of allowed me to really understand that you know on one hand you have the commercial sweet making can be understood not only from the lens of the sweet shops but also the street food vendors and here in the context of Bangladesh particularly the people who sell people who choose to sell Pitta's in winters. Yeah so now that we have sort of gone through the various areas you did the sources of your research and how you are mapping Mishdi can we just briefly go into this I food item Mishdi itself and and walk us through what is what categories of what categorizes Mishdi especially in in West Bengal and Bangladesh and how is it different from let's say a desert of course conceptually they are very different but in in in the material which in which they are constructed it's also very different so could you just take us through how so that our listeners could have an understanding differentiated from a typical desert which is consumed elsewhere. Mishdi can be first and foremost it's very important to remember that you know Mishdi can be a meal in itself right and the primary ingredient of Mishdi that we have or we commonly associate with the sweet making in Bengal has been milk and milk basis also various grains right particularly rice and various sorts of pulses and fruits. Now if we really look at the commercial landscape of sweet making the commercial landscape of sweet making has three milk base one is the chana what is chana chana is a coagulation of milk through separation of wave water right by any acidic material and separation of wave water and there is a long supply chain in aware the particularly people from people who own cows they end up supplying this milk base to the sweet shop so one goes the chana second is koya koya is desiccated milk right and the third which is very less talked about and it is a technique now that has remained only in the hands of few households in christian augur no dia and this is the only space where I have found you know women curry gauze is the technique of making sure s a r now what is a short short is a milk cream now when you think of a milk cream the listeners will think of a milk cream as something very soft creamy but unlike the milk cream that we are all familiar with this milk cream is gently lifted it is left to be dried right so it becomes a stiff layer of disc and so chana keer chana koya as well as slightly pick and milk or keer koya and short these are the four milk bases that are used in the commercial sweet shops in pita which I just spoke in response to the previous question pita is made from primarily rice powder right it is associated with the harvest and you know in rice powder it's mixed with various sorts of ingredients to give shape some could be steamed some could be fried and pitas are both sweet and savory right so in Bangladesh particularly pitas are also say eaten with you know meat curries egg curries and in December 2017 I was very fortunate to attend this national pita uchabindhaka which had a fantastic array of you know pitas being served with duck meat to all sorts of meat and you know duck eggs duck egg curry which is a winter relish at the same time if you really look at the sweetening agent so one when the milk bases if you really look at the sweetening agent India particularly the geography of India as we all know from previous scholarship of say Shahidah main KTHaya you know will may like when you really look at the this part of the geography this part of the geography was also Michael Kronel's work sugarcane was you know sugarcane was widely available so the actually you know and in the cast association newsletters clearly shows us that you know the mother cast group actually own also many members of the mother cast group own the original sugar mills before sugar is coming from other places you know before the white refined sugar that today we associate with right so sugar is a very important ingredient right and on-site sugar we also have something called the date palm jaggery which we take prided right and this in in Bangla we call it the nolin gore it is very seasonal like right around autumn you know this and this gore has a very very short season and it becomes one of the winter delicacies these goes the these are the ingredients used in the commercial landscape when it comes to the domestic sweets you know one of the most common domestic sweet is rice pudding or pais which is made from a combination of again boiling milk and added to that is rice and depending on the seasons and availability of the sweetening agent it is the sugar or it is the jaggery that is used the seasonal jaggery that is used so when I say misty is a meal in itself there are you know people who walked it walk into sweet shops and you know they consume occurred right and they eat you know two three sweets and drink a glass of water and they walk out right so when you really look at misty this material in itself the misty all these misties have different names you know and the naming of the misty could be both a dedication to you know someone famous in a culture or it could be based on ingredients or it could be metaphorical name in itself so the materiality of misty is that you know the chana you know if you really look at the commercial landscape the chana is cooked with sugar and then there are various wooden molds that are found this wooden molds are clearly a reflection of how societies a statisticization of excess is changing right and the wooden molds could be shaped like a kernel of a palmira fruit to it could be shaped like a strawberry to a kiwi to the head of a fish or the tail of a fish and it could be many many things right so when you walk into a sweet shop right when you walk into a sweet shop anywhere across Bengal the listeners will be fascinated to see at least at least a minimum of six to seven variety of sweets and in the case of Chandra Nagore where I did fieldwork at least during the time I was doing fieldwork there were at least close to 70 variety of sweets that were getting stocked up the visual imagery that you get when you walk into a most of the sweet shops are refrigerated showcase with trays arranged and the sweets are arranged like a pyramid in different colors and sizes and the sugar syrup based sweets so some sweets are dry some sweets are soaked in sugar syrup and some sweets are also sold in candidate version there is another space where sweets shops are sold sold particularly the crystallized sugar sweets right sweets like batasha nakuldana there is also a seasonal variety of sweet sold particularly during holy called mott right many of the sweets are only meet from sugar and it's it really shows the crystallized variety of sweets so if you really look at the materiality of sweet it is made from divers ingredients and depending on you know where it is getting produced sold or exchanged exchanged I'm using for the domestic spaces you really see a difference of the materiality of sweets so many sweet shops in in West Bengal as well as in Bangladesh they actually I have found very less amount of rice space sweet sold in the sweet shops itself right so as you rightly as you have pointed out that you know the materiality of sweet exchange and depending on the geographies as well now I would like to go in one of the central themes of this book which is how cast and religious hierarchies influence the making of this sweet because you have been talking about the tools and the instruments you have used in making these sweets and the craftsmanship which goes behind it, where cast affiliations become such an integral part to the craft and the practice of sweet making itself. So for our listeners who are unfamiliar with the concept of cast, it's an entrenched social stratification system and especially what you have pointed out is how a confectionery cast is sort of linked to the construction and the construction of values of sweet and sweet excesses. So could you walk us through how cast plays a role in in West Bengal as well as the iterations which have you know travelled across the partition in a very different region of Bangladesh. In other listeners will also let me and I discuss this extensively in the chapter 4 of the book making sweets right. Now you are absolutely right that you know at the outset I must clarify that there has been a diversification of sweet businesses to other cast groups beyond the Modaks or the Moira cast right. But at the same time if you really pay attention to the if we really try want to understand how a Modak or Moira plays a very very important role it is one of the 36 artistnal cast groups in the cast hierarchy of Bengal. But in upper Bangla when I went to Bangladesh the when I asked you know the secretary of the then Bangladesh sweet meat manufacturers association the trade is association that you know are there Moira own sweet shops he said who who is a Moira you know and then I got to know the surname the surname coach is used interchangeably and loosely for communities who are traditionally associated with sweet making in Bangladesh. And so what you clearly kind of see here is that so in this particular chapter making sweets I divide the chapter into you know four parts that what it is to be a Moira right who is a Moira and how does that shape the notion of sweet making. The second I go into the discussion of after you know like because there are all the legendary sweets that we know including say including you know the invention of say Rasagolla to you know doy to Lady Gaini to any sort of a monoharash on all of these are associated with various legends of Moira. At the same time it is also important to remember so I title it you know Ghosius makes sweets it is because of what I got to know in Bangladesh and there is also there is also a section of people neither Ghosius nor the Moira who are the Peter sellers as well as it is very very important to remember that in Ipar Bangla you know where I got to know or in West Bengal where I got to know of the caste group only Moira's and associated with sweet making traditionally what gets missed in this discussion is you know the seasonal there is a seasonal sweet that we now get you know called Moira which has nothing to do with which has nothing to do with the place and Moira actually was more according to the GI application could be credited to the craftsmanship of the Shidulkar Shidul tribes and other backward classes and Mahishos in join our goal Mojilpur in South 24 Porgonas. Now when you really look at this length and breadth of the sweet making and how caste plays a very important role it is very important to remember that sweets are not only consumed only by humans but sweets also play a very important part in various rituals and therefore I think this has been one of the this has this one needs to keep this in mind because the more the caste association newsletters constantly takes pride in the fact that we are that they are producing a good which is offered during festivals to certain day teas and all of that right and this also informs a despite you know today you have you know if you really walk into a sweet shop there is a sweet shop owner and there is a category of workers there is workers who are hired who are actually working there like wage laborers right. So the sweet shop owner may have a tacit knowledge but the sweet shop owner need not be making sweets this is very important to remember so he's clearly an artisan he could be an artisan entrepreneur he's just an entrepreneur himself and the wage workers come from people are hired across caste groups but across caste groups of what kind of caste groups I have come across I have mostly come across the caste groups associated with milk trading because the workers are hired through informal networks in both in Bangladesh as well as in West Bengal right. Who are the work what are the workers referred to in West Bengal in West Bengal their workers are referred to as curry gods in upper Bangalore the workers are referred to as ustads like you and you what it is to be a ustad you actually take 10 to 15 years to become an ustad and you clearly kind of see that many a times you know and this particular conversation was you know quite important to understand this hierarchy of caste and religion that one of the sweet shop owners you know in Bangladesh actually said mostly sweet sweet making was confined to your people of your communities let me find you a curry god you should speak who will be able to tell you better. So this sameness of religion that is associated the sameness of religion sameness of lineage that gets associated with sweet making also kind of tells about how notions and perceptions of hierarchy you know ends up working and I think this is where I have actually benefited from Balmulina Trajans work scholarship of culturalization of caste to really think through that you know how does caste operate say in the context of a sweet shop in Bangladesh you know where where the sweet shop owner is not pointing me towards a gauche but towards a Hindu worker as someone who knows the craft better whereas there is also a whereas you know the ustad may actually be a Muslim worker right this also shows the way the working of caste and religion in a sweet shop. So there is as interestingly as you have pointed out how caste plays a role even as a cultural maker and a place where it's not caste is not as entrenched as it would be in this side in West Bengal but it still finds a meaning in sweet shops. So quite interestingly there's another aspect of the chapters which look at the work hierarchies right and you have also very in a very detailed way work spoken about the craft itself the artisanal aspects the use of tools the use of technique the understanding of smell and and the understanding the importance of skill. So I sort of feel that there's and you have also pointed out that there's attention or a tussle between these ritualistic and the artisanal aspects of sweet making. So one that is shaped by the acquisition of skill but still there are but still caste operates within these within the sweet shops. So how does this negotiation work in the current or the contemporary time especially with the professionalization of sweet shops as we as we get to see it around. See the professionalization of the sweet shops is there at one end but at the same time this is where one needs to remember that how are the workers hired. The workers are not hired even though you know the workers are hired through very informal I mean it's really word of mouth you know that the workers are hired very recently someone sent me a photograph of of you know an advertisement that he came across in a local station where it was written you know a sweet it was it was almost like an advertisement a contractor was putting out that no workers are hired but this is a very recent phenomenon like you know I think one month back someone sent me but when I that feel we're from 2010 to 2018 all the workers I spoke to they said that you know either they got to know of a position from the local chana supplier or there you know or they knew someone as a helper in some other sweet shop right and then they got to know so it's a word of mouth through which all the workers are hired. Now when we think about this word of mouth and hiring of workers particularly in a society like ours where the kin networks are an extension also of you know kin networks are an extension of our cast ties class ties and religious ties right as well as gender ties. Now a question I think this this tension you know comes about is in the fact that many switch up owners at least there was one switch up owners who who went on to record to say that you know I am not a moira but I'm referred to as the moira right and so this also shows that despite the diversification of the profession of sweet making beyond the moira or beyond the ghoush there is both a mythic celebration of this ghoush and the moira as well as a certain sort of a I mean people who are not from the moira backgrounds they do not they want to maintain a certain sort of a critical distance with this with this cast baggage that this term carries right and this tension you know constantly gets worked out in how people represent themselves right so there are you know sweet shop owners with say sweet shops with 200 you know with claiming a lineage of 200 years 100 years and they actually take pride in the cast lineage right we belong to this family we belong to this lineage right so much so and I refer to in the book there is a popular quiz show that that is quite popular in in Bengal where there was a special episode on switch up owners where you know very publicly endogamy is getting celebrated right and whereas on one hand and there's a lot of debate on there's a lot of excellence scholarship on cast in Bengal particularly you know by Prishkarno's work Prishkarno's in work or Samhane Prishkarno's particularly you know Prishkarno's work you know which really kind of shows that there has been a way in which we have Prishkarno's work also there are there's a lot of critical scholarship on them that's emerging on the middle cast of Bengal there's a need to study you know who are who wear this middle cast who wear this artisanal cast what has happened to them right now by the time you know by the time you know particularly this is when I was studying you know Cadbury Mishty I came across that you know the I thought the you know like the cast association newsletters I got hold of in 2010 2012 you know which were published in 1920s onwards they were a thing of the past and when I was interviewing actually a switch up owner he this was when the Cadbury when I was researching on the Cadbury Mishty and I told him that you know I had heard about the legendary Ashutoshnag he gave me a copy of Shama's Burtika and this where the Moodoo Association is still alive right now here you know I'm always you know every time I presented the book in Calcutta I think a very well-meaning conversation has has has generated that what is the intent of the cast association neutralist as cast association newsletters in today's time what what is the content of these newsletters these newsletters carry you know advertisements of matrimonial advertisements they are declaring you know who are the you know who have secured a first position or a rank in the school living examinations at the same time these cast association newsletters were also very central to organize the Moodoo cast to when they when they went for a movement to claim other backward classes status right so this also kind of tells you you know how a cast association how the need to study cast associations particularly in you know in craft based particularly in you know in in craft based production which had roots in which had roots in a certain kind of cast hierarchy right so sort of scale labor and hierarchies which are deeply rooted in a cast and religion sort of get enmeshed and that is how sweetness is produced in those intersections also the political claim making also the political claim making of this categories you know like like I really think I mean I I this is one part I really want to acknowledge that you know I wish there was some discussion I had done in the book about you know how did the Moodoo cast you know for instance you know there are Moodoo cast who also do not own sweet shops right so it would be important to also you know map that because there are also the same way the diversification of the sweet business have happened beyond the Moodoo cast beyond Hindu confectioners it would be very interesting to actually for someone to study what to you know Moodoo's who do not own sweet shops really feel about the sameness of you know cast and occupational collapse that would really kind of bring out the culturalization of cast that Balmundirina Tragjan talks about and it is it is also important this is very important because when we really think about craft commodity production in India they're all rooted in some cast or in religion right but there is a diversification that has also happened so what happened after the diversification what do people you know when people don't embrace that work of life do they are they expected do they face what are the experiences they face you know I think that it's important to also study this particularly with the middle cast and occupational castes right so it sort of brings us at this intersection where skill and diversification and sort of cast plays such an important role in in in the making of sweets so just to go beyond this and look at the symbol symbolic values of sweets as you have written that sweets are not only you know edible items of pleasure but also have an exchange value so could you tell our listeners how does sweet get itself represented in this exchange well of course which is also very very much rooted in the ritualistic framework that you talk about it's rooted in the ritualistic framework but it's also in the everyday life right you know the for instance one of the can you take a guess you know what would be the peak sales of our sweet shops in Bangladesh any take a wild guess if we follow the ritualistic calendar then during the season of ETH or any kind of celebration religious celebrations it's actually on the day of school living examination results right right make sense right and right I think it makes sense you know because the and also the Bengali New Year right the Bengali New Year is is one day I mean I hope someone gets to write about it because I couldn't do the field work on exactly on the day of the Bengali New Year because that's when our semesters are in full swing but if and here the one of the like across India including West Bengal one of the peak sales actually happened during Diwali so much so now why exchange is as an idea is important like if you'd lady look at one of the popular catberry advertisements kuch meetah ho jai right even catberry the chocolate giant couldn't ignore the ee Diwali and you know the kuch meetah ho jai clearly is a sort of a signal to the popularity of sweets that ex or the in the way in which you know when we think about ritual exchange we cannot think about the meetah nish te and all sorts of the traditional sweets that exist right so we're at the same time you know I think it's very important to also remember that there are you know festivities and rituals like say Bengali New Year or school living examinations or wedding celebrations you know in both the wedding celebrations there are quite a that there's a there is sweet access like across faiths you know be it in the weddings or in Muslim weddings right so the top door or the gift exchange between the grooms and the bright families have this exchange have this tradition of you know sweets which are embossed with the names of rituals you know that that is one sort of an exchange the other sort of a exchange I think that sweet shops have now gotten is also exchange of taste and sweetening agents like the catberry misty being one of them there are you know a lot of synthetic fruit flavors are now there in the sweet shops as well as sugar replic substitutes have played a very very important part and all this exchange you know that we see is it's very important important to remember is also an exchange in the way in which you know, sweet shops are also borrowing from the domestic rituals, right? So, there are certain sweets that used to be only seasonally made in homes. But with a certain sort of a lifestyle that we have with a sort with the changes in lifestyle, many of this home-made sweets are now entering the domain of sweet shops, right? You know, so, sweet shops in West Bengal, they will have a dedicated section to certain peta, party shopter or certain peta, you know, only in the during the harvest, which used to be once made at homes. One of the important shifts that we see is also how restaurants have now started holding, you know, there is a, the restaurant selling Bengali food are also, you know, embracing the sweet landscape. And all of this exchanges are clearly kind of contribute to the making of excess because no meal is complete without a sweet, right? At the same time, each of the sites of production are creating their own cultural registers of excess, right? And also, many of the restaurants, you know, they are, what are the sweets? You know, they don't necessarily always sell shandesh in a restaurant, right? They will have various versions of doi, they will have various versions of pash. So, a little bit from the commercial switch, a little bit from the domestic space. At the same time, when you really look at the Cadibeiri Mishdi campaign, it's a very interesting way that, you know, so before this, also fusion food was a marriage of techniques, you know, where, in the commercial landscape, people were borrowing techniques from each other. But here, an ingredient is being introduced to adapt to the technique. And it's a huge shift, you know, you see here. So, yeah. And so, one of the, I think, one of the primary exchanges that I talk about in the book is how sweets play a very important role in the gift exchange, right? So, you know, it is considered it, one of the, the sweets are supposed to bring in good news, bad news, right? So, there is a way in which sweets really inform an important part of the gift commodity exchange in the everyday social life in both the geographies. Right. So, as in, sweets play an important role and have in the gift commodities and as an exchange value, it sort of operates both the sacred as well as the profane land. So, yeah. So, now to just shift slightly beyond the ritualistic and the labor values which we have spoken about, now I wanted to go what you call the standardizing value and you're looking sweets through the lens of legal registers, both in terms of granting geographical indication to sweets and also in terms of the regulatory orders which we spoke about in the beginning. So, can you talk us through one by one through the impact or the role of these legal registers which had offered first of course, in the case of the regulatory orders and how now we see a contradictory sense of when sweets or mischievous was or the essential commodity which goes behind mischievous, China was banned and now it is not sort of we have opened sweets shops in COVID times and there's a changing of meaning. So, could you walk us through how the role of legal registers have played an important role in the construction of sweetness or this excess? See, I think the state has a very very important, I mean to study any, I mean I should have said this at the first go, I really wanted to approach the making of sweets as a biographical approach, study its in its entirety whatever possible you know during this nine years. So, when you really study a biography of a mischievous, biography of a mischievous would be incomplete without really looking at you know without really looking at not only the sites of production what has contributed to its circulation and here I think the question of particularly because today when you walk into a sweet shop, it is normally the owner who is making the sweet or selling it right. So, you have the carigalor, you have the sweet shop owner, there is a salesman who is working at the counter right. So, you have a whole array of actors who are responsible for the making of sweets. So, when you really look at you know particularly sweets and what has been its relation and why was it important for me to bring in this two chapters one which I call you know the authorship you know this was to do with the GI because if you would recall there was quite a bit of exchange of words between you know political leaders about you know who invented who should get the GI of Raschegulla. Raschegulla right. Yes you know whether it's or is and whether or you know West Bengal and there were constantly when this debate was happening people were approaching and I was like well you know both the states will eventually get it because there's always a clause there in the GI law which is homony mass GI you know if they're able to establish legal documentation. Now if you really think about the passion with which this debate happened almost as if GI is not the origin story GI is about you know which place GI is about you know the association of a produce to a place or establishment of that legacy of that produce with a place but place is not devoid of people and people migrate. In our context you know there have been so much of migration right. How do we know who is producing what right and even with with particularly with the I thought the chapter on GI is very important to really talk about and not today when you think about a sweet today when you really think about a sweet you go we think that okay if you go to this sweet shop you will get this sweet so it has been replaced by the branch name right. We have invisible eyes the congos the owners it's like oh go to Jalbara Shurjam Odo you will get a you will get a good tasting Jalbara go to this particular sweets you will get something so we are remembering the name of the sweet shop right. Now the remembrance of the name of the sweet shop or the branding of the sweet shop is also a sort of a shift you know that has happened but at the same time look at the paradox with which all the sweet associations sweet business associations they are rushing to actually apply for the GI and how do we really understand geographical indication particularly for craft based commodities and this is where I really thought that there is this wonderful piece by Madhavi Sundar and also there's some great works on craft craft on craft based commodities and GI which kind of really forces to look at you know what is happening like how do we understand the artisan or who is the artisan once a commodity is getting this GI indication. This is where I really thought that it is important to engage with who is the author of Mishni you know or is the authorship completely dead and will urge the readers to take a look at it and you know see if they agree with the thesis that I'm putting forth. Second I really thought of adding this chapter adding this chapter you know regulating sweets which is chapter six of the book particularly to bring for certain points about as you rightly point out about standardizing value when we really look at when we really really look at you know what happened in the 60s the this two sort of control orders this was also the time when India really did not achieve milk sufficiency right there are various debates about who benefited from this milk sufficiency you know that's a that's a different debate but when you really look at this milk control orders this milk control orders were happening in all the states including West Bengal as well right where the sweet shops were thought to be the culprit. How did the sweet shops what were the public debates that were taking place in the both the legal debates and the public debates right I refer to extensively to this speech you know which was broadcasted in all India radio where there was and there was a great the legal debate around it or the was particularly around the fact that the government is not understanding our culture. So how do cultural tropes, how do sweet shops use cultural tropes, how do sweet shops negotiate with those cultural tropes and how do sweet shops, how do sweet shops also benefit from those cultural tropes in trying, in keeping with this shifting notions and cultural perceptions about sweetness. So diabetic misty is available, yes, but at the same time someone who is trying to offer or pick up a sweet to take to a local temple may not actually offer that diabetic misty. And it could be you know something which is something which they have picked up as a habit. So how do you understand what makes you know people shift between these registers, how do people and how do sweet shops you know adjust to those registers. Yeah, also could you a bit more elaborate on the points of identifying something as an essential and a non essential commodity especially in terms of when the state is issuing this regulation or the regulatory orders and how it played an important role back then. See I think it is very very important to remember that when this orders are coming about, okay. It is they were you know like the state was you know trying to also say that you know understand milk as an essential commodity, right. So China is made from milk and so I discussed this in great detail in the section listing milk as an essential commodity, right. So where I discussed that you know how the control orders listed milk as an essential commodity to ban sweets produced from milk to it is both China and key and we also need to remember that these orders were passed with the purpose of increasing the supply of milk and what was the state saying that the the sweet shops are diverting the milk supplies which is an essential commodity for the mothers and the children, right. So by the time you know the so the first control order that got passed was West Bengal, China sweets control order 1965 and then the court actually kind of you know said that you know well just by a listing China based sweets are you going to increase your milk supply and the court actually kind of cautious the ban on the grounds that the state would not be able to milk the meat the deficit in milk supply just by a mere ban on China products such a shandesh and the court was actually critical of the failure of the state to control the production of China, right. So look at the way in which you know the court is also coming down that you know that the court is also taking milk as an essential commodity, right. And at the same time the court is actually you know saying that you have to control the production of China and then came the second order of the government of West Bengal in November on 18 November 1965 the West Bengal milk products control order where you know again they were repeated newspaper reports that were there around how much of a liquid milk supply was available. Very animated court debates happened you know around this particular time and and what you clearly see here was that you know that constantly newspapers were reporting about how much of milk supply the state has managed to increase and how much deficit still remains. Now if you really look at this both this bans they are not saying sweets are bad, right. They are saying that we need to control the production of sweets if we want to increase the supply of milk. And milk is an essential commodity so milk is an essential commodity sugar is an essential commodity. So you clearly kind of see here that you know there was a there was a way in which you know most of the debates that happened was actually around and neither the sweet shop owners were also debating that you know they that about whether milk or sugar should not be treated as an essential commodity. This debate does not happen at all right they just wanted that we do not stop treating as a scourprits for diverting your milk supplies right. That you know we are the we are one of the main consumers the debates that unfolded at that point in time. Clearly kind of shows that you know that so the what and particularly you know when I think this all in your radio speech that I refer to both in the book chapter also in the article in contributions to Indian sociology are clearly kind of you know tells us that the way in which the sweet shop owners were actually defining themselves on the cultural logic that don't kill our culture right. And so it don't kill our culture rather you know the debates that were taking place he actually kind of and even then in a professional channel chief minister he had to respond on because let's also remember the sweet shop or sweet shops like the closure of the sweet shops actually actually let to you know if I'm remembering the remembering the figures right you know let her retrenchment actually of around 39,000 workers then who are working roughly you know in 8,000 sweet shops in Calcutta. Now PCSEN when he was addressing you know he actually said they know there are that the sweet shops should actually focus on other savory items or the he which do not require chhana. This became a bonus of condition that how can we how can we you know not make sweets where chhana became all reduced to a cultural logic. Right so what we get to see is that this this standardizing value which you talk about gets sort of very intertwined with the ritualistic meaning and the artisanal values which we also spoke in the earlier so sort of it translates both of these and then it produces a sort of a value which is which which again constructs the cultural registers of sweetness right. Yeah so that's why I kind of say propose that you know the excess is a combination of this standardizing value ritual value and like excess is produced at this cost per standardizing value ritual value and artisanal value yeah. Right so in this episode I was joined by Dr. Ishita De to discuss her book Sweet Exaces which traces how sweetness has endured through its practices in everyday life and how it has survived in its coded sociality informed by as she mentioned the ritualistic meanings, artisanal labor and standardizing value in West Bengal and Bangladesh. The book offers a rich insight into sweetness by providing a contextual and grounded socially driven explanation as well as a rigorous analysis of the quintessential connection between sweets and Bengalis. Dr. De it was a delightful conversation and I have learned a great deal from your book. Thank you for taking the time. Thank you so much for doing this interview. [Music]