India says cheese

There are gifts for the president of Switzerland other than cheese. Still, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave Guy Parmelin three award-winning cheeses in New Delhi on October 5, the gift sent a quiet message. Gulmarg, Konark and Yeoor, made by Mumbai’s Eleftheria Cheese, had won medals overseas, two in Bern, the capital of Gruyère and Emmental country. India appeared to have something to share on the cheeseboard.

 

Gulmarg is a Brie-style, heart-shaped cheese with a snowy, velvety rind, aged for two-three weeks. Konark is a tomme shaped like the chariot wheel of Odisha’s Sun Temple; and Yeoor, a rose-rind mountain cheese aged for eight-nine months in the Gruyère tradition. For a country that’s famous overseas for paneer in curries and sliced cheese on burgers, the gift was a small revelation. India’s cheese story, however, began long before its new cheesemakers.

 

Dairy traces in Harappan pottery from Kotada Bhadli, Gujarat, show that people processed milk about 4,500 years ago. The findings, however, have limits: They show people could handle milk, but that does not mean Harappans made cheese like cheddar. Vedic writings talk about āmikṣā, a mass made by curdling milk with sour milk, and vājina, the whey that remains. The basic principle of cheesemaking was already there, but India took a different path.

 

Practical reasons mattered — aged cheese needs cellars, but much of the subcontinent is hot and humid. Traditional rennet made from calf stomachs also did not fit well in a culture that reveres cows and has a large vegetarian population. Also, ghee and curd handled preservation and nutrition exceptionally well. Furthermore, in Vedic traditions and broader Indian culture, splitting milk was seen as inauspicious, yet a repertoire of fresh and dried cheeses grew to fill the aged varieties’ void.

 

In Jammu, Gujjar shepherds make kalari by curdling milk with whey and drying the rounds so they can be fried in their own fat. In the Himalayas, chhurpi is cooked, pressed, and dried until it is hard as rock so it can last years. In Gujarat, Parsi families drain topli paneer in wicker baskets. The steps are familiar to cheesemakers everywhere: Warm, curdle, drain, shape and preserve. But the sun and smoke replace the need for a cellar.

 

Persian and Central Asian influences are often credited with popularising paneer, but the evidence is weak. In Bengal, the popular story credits the Portuguese with introducing acid-curdling, giving rise to chhena and, eventually, rasgulla and sandesh. But historians disagree; Bandel, a salty, smoked cheese named after the old Portuguese settlement near Hooghly, is a more tangible legacy. Around Kalimpong, Swiss missionaries left a modest Gouda-like tradition. India had plenty of cheese, but its many styles never came together in one national market.

 

Then came the White Revolution: Operation Flood in the 1970s — led by Verghese Kurien and dairy cooperatives — turned India into a milk leader. Amul first brought cheese to the masses. Britannia and Mother Dairy followed. For years, cheese came in a tin, a packet, or as a slice, made to melt and last long. Pizza shops brought mozzarella to homes in the mid-1990s, but handmade, aged cheese stayed a niche pursuit.

 

Making cheese is exacting: Starter cultures turn milk sugar into lactic acid; rennet sets the milk; and cut curds release whey before stirring, heating, draining and salting determine the texture. Some cheeses are eaten fresh; others age for months, with temperature and humidity shaping their rind and taste. In India’s heat, a good cold chain is needed to transform an experiment to a viable product.

 

The serious artisanal shift started 15 years ago, in small kitchens and creameries. Some people who returned from abroad missed the cheeses they had tasted, and social entrepreneurs saw a chance to make money from pastoral milk. A Kashmir business that began with western styles went on to champion kalari. In Rajasthan, an enterprise working with the Raika community turns camel milk into feta and cream cheese. A Chennai creamery buys milk from herders and helps build the supply chain.

 

These makers are translating, not copying, the western varieties. One Chennai cheesemaker coats cheddar with milagai podi, a South Indian chilli-and-lentil powder, and recommends grating it over a dosa. A Uttarakhand farm mixes spices into its cheese. A Bengaluru brewpub swaps cream for burrata in butter chicken. With flavours in the mix, borrowed names matter less; Indian milk and tastes can stand on their own.

 

International judges have taken note, too. Eleftheria’s Norwegian-style brown whey cheese won India’s first World Cheese Awards silver in 2021. Its cloth-bound cheddar, Moony, won gold in 2022. Konark won gold in 2023, and silver in Bern in 2025 (alongside Yeoor), while Gulmarg won Super Gold in Brazil this year. Desi Dairy Dialogue now brings makers, herders and cheesemongers together.

 

Calling artisanal cheesemaking a revolution would overstate the numbers, as per capita consumption remains low and processed cheese dominates supermarket shelves. The change is quieter: Sun-dried and smoked cheeses now sit alongside factory slices and cellar-aged wheels. A country that began separating curds from whey 4,500 years ago is learning to give cheese time. The three Indian cheeses on the Swiss president’s table suggest how far that journey has come.

 

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