Date Palm Jaggery - The History in India
Date Palm Jaggery is one of the finest sweeteners which is mostly used in Eastern and Southern Indian regions. The Eastern ghats in Orissa host the Soura Tribals who make this jaggery in cottage industries under the Government of Orissa Enterprise.
Palm jaggery is quite extensively used to make sweets and dessert in the East of India. Bengali sweets like Rasgulla and Sondesh particularly are made with liquid date palm jaggery which is fondly referred to as Nolen Gur. In Tamil Nadu as well sweets like Halwa and savoury items like Paniyaram are made with palm jaggery which is called Karupatti in most Southern regions.
The reason why Date Palm jaggery is a lesser popular sweetener across India may have its answer in the fact that cane sugar was abundantly available in the North and west for many years. This is of course due to the fact that Sugar cane industries were developed under the imperial preference during the British Rule. This in turn adversely affected the Palm Gur production in India. In 1937, when the local ministries came to power, they established a ban on cane sugar and encouraged the locals to engage in palm gur production as an alternate source of employment. Post Independence, a separate sector was established in the Union Ministry of food and agriculture to look after the palm jaggery development programme in India.
Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh already had a traditional industry of Palm jaggery owing to the consumer demand. More states were encouraged and trained to make palm jaggery as well. The origin of palm jaggery in Odisha is believed to be very ancient. Even, MK Gandhi had laid focus on the promotion of palm jaggery during his period. Although West Bengal is also a leading producer of palm jaggery in the country, its making process in Odisha differs from the neighbouring State.
The traditional Palm Jaggery is today gaining a positive demand back in Indian kitchens after almost a few decades. Traditional recipes are coming back and with those traditional sweeteners are also coming back. We at Govedic are focused on making the traditional and authentic products from India available globally. Our Palm Jaggery comes from the state of Orissa that is made using the traditional methods and it is purely organic in nature as no natural or synthetic colouring agents and artificial sweetening agents are added in this jaggery.
Our motive is to bring back the pure traditional items from India on a global platform. Palm Jaggery from Orissa is another step that Govedic is very happy about.