It’s becoming more and more difficult to understand what will cause the next outrage online. From a celebrity’s bad general knowledge to an ex-cricketer doing yoga, practically everything can set off the trolls. The latest object to fall foul is the innocuous egg roll, one of the staples of Bengali cuisine.

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A vlogger’s ‘egg roll recipe’ video set the cat among the pigeons as some ‘internet Hindus’ felt that eating non-vegetarian food during the holy period of Navratri was a cardinal sin even though non-veg food is the norm for Bengalis. 

The online culinary battle turned into a culture war with some accusing Bengalis of high-handed. Vlogger Saptarishi Chakraborty, one of the co-founders of the Youtube channel Bong Eats told the Indian Express: “ “Insiya and I created Bong Eats to document the food of Calcutta, which reflects its cosmopolitan nature. It isn’t just Hindu Bengali food. In Calcutta we have a roll for everyone.”

One of the comments

He also wrote a blog post against the hatred spewed against Bengalis and Bengali culture. He wrote: “We, as well as other people in India who do not speak Hindi and have religious rituals and culture different from the mainstream North Indian Hindus, have always been looked at with a mixture of suspicion and contempt.”

Writing about how Bengalis relate to Goddess Durga he wrote: “Our mother is not a submissive cow! She is a fire-spewing, demon-killing, badass woman who knows how to have fun.”