Regulating Sweets in Bengal: Control Orders and Their Afterlife

Abstract

Sweets, especially milk-based sweets, are considered to be a ubiquitous part of Bengali cuisine. In March 2020, amidst the lockdown, the Government of West Bengal designated hours during the day for sweet shops to operate to avoid wasting milk. Such state notifications constitute an important site to study how legal meanings of sweetness revolve around the idea of ‘essential commodities’. Through a close reading of the Control Orders issued by the Government of West Bengal in the 1960s I show how the statist measures to ensure the supply of milk, an essential commodity, extend to not only the commodity itself but also the products—in this case, sweets. Control Orders, follow-up court cases, newspaper debates and the state’s attempt to create a compassionate lobby through a much-publicised speech on All India Radio show how the legal meanings of sweets—as wastage of milk vs. cultural logic of sweetness, as an integral part of Bengali life—come into play. I show that Control Orders work with lists, one of the classic modes of documentation, and I argue that by listing milk as essential the Control Orders ended up listing milk products—especially chhana, as excess—and regulating sweets.