The Butter Chicken controversy: What Moti Mahal's trademark violation suit against Daryaganj is about

Butter chicken has been one of the most searched Indian dishes globally. (Photo via Unsplash)

Date: April 26, 1949 

Place: Delhi

Firm Name: M/s Moti Mahal. 

Serial no. 161 

Address: Shop No. 4838, Daryaganj, Delhi 

That fortuitous day 75 years ago, three men - Kundan Lal Gujral (resident of H No. 2960, Gali Nawab, Sharifatola, Delhi), Thakar Dass (resident of H. No. 296) and Kundan Lal Jagi (resident of H No. 3443, Gali Khajurwali, Delhi) - registered Moti Mahal under the Indian Partnership Act 1932. On the partnership deed, their date of joining is 3-12-47.

In the middle of this tiny Shop no 4838 a tandoor was dug and Moti Mahal’s tandoori chicken gained popularity. Thakar Dass had exited the partnership - there is no definite recorded date of this - and the two Kundan Lals - Jaggi and Gujral - manned the restaurant.

And this is where the debate began on another fortuitous day. Leftover tandoori chicken hung in skewers and in the Moti Mahal kitchen a gravy with tomato and cream was prepared to dunk the drying tandoori chicken to create what the world knows as butter chicken. But which Kundal Lal actually stirred the pot in the kitchen? Was it Gujral or was it Jaggi?

That butter chicken was invented in Moti Mahal is an established fact. For decades, Moti Mahal was synonymous with the dish with the mighty, monied and the gourmand ordering it frequently. “Visiting Delhi and not going to Moti Mahal is like going to Agra and not visiting the Taj Mahal,” Maulana Abul Kalam Azad had said to the Shah of Iran who was on an official visit to India.

Things, however, changed when Amit Bagga & Raghav Jaggi (grandson of Kundan Lal Jaggi) founded Daryaganj Restaurants in April 2019 with Raghav Jaggi acquiring the controversial trademark a year earlier. It was on March 14, 2018, that the Registrar of Trademarks (Government of India) granted Raghav Jaggi, the grandson of Kundan Lal Jaggi, the Certificate of Registration of Trademark (No. 3777964) the trademark: “Daryaganj - By the Inventors of Butter Chicken and Dal Makhani” (Moneycontrol has a copy of the Trademark certificate).

“The Moti Mahal restaurant in Daryaganj where Butter Chicken and Dal Makhani were invented was founded by Mr Kundan Lal Jaggi and Mr Kundan Lal Gujral with a third partner who retired subsequently, This is an established fact. Accordingly, Raghav Jaggi’s family are the inventors of butter chicken and dal makhani and why we have used and registered the tagline,” Amit Bagga, Co-founder and CEO, Daryaganj Restaurants, told Moneycontrol.com. According to Bagga, it was Kundan Lal Jaggi who created the dish while Kundan Lal Gujral manned the front-end of Moti Mahal that the two originally set up in Peshawar in 1920.

However, Rupa Gujral (daughter of Kundan Lal Gujral) has sued Daryaganj Restaurants for misleading the public through misrepresentation that the butter chicken was invented by Daryaganj Restaurants and “in some manner connected with the plaintiffs’ predecessor’s first Moti Mahal restaurant in Daryaganj, when in fact no such connection or association exists,” the suit reads.

Rupa Gujral and her son Monish Gujral have also sought the owners of Daryaganj to be ordered to stop claiming they invented the two dishes, and be restrained from making the claim that Kundan Lal Gujral was merely the face of the restaurant responsible for “front end management” while Jaggi was the chef who came up with the recipes. The plaintiffs have also objected to the use of an old photograph of Moti Mahal in Peshawar by Daryaganj Restaurants on their Facebook.

After the suit was filed, Daryaganj Restaurants promised “to remove the disputed photograph from their website…. The action is intended to demonstrate goodwill and foster a spirit of cooperation between the two parties”  (as stated in the suit).

The Gujrals are seeking Rs 2 crore in damages from Daryaganj Restaurants. The next court hearing is scheduled for May 29, 2024.

Various versions of butter chicken: Even before the debate about the inventor of butter chicken started raging, the iconic North Indian dish was being remixed into several avatars. There’s the Goila Butter Chicken by Saransh Goila that became viral after he showed off his skill as a part of Masterchef Australia in 2018. Goila Butter Chicken was founded in 2016 in Mumbai by Chef Saransh Goila and Vivek Sahani both batch mates from IHM Aurangabad; currently, it has 60+ outlets in more than 18 cities in India and the UK. The secrets to Goila’s recipe are the all-important infusion of smoke, the tomato-to-dairy ratio (80:20 as opposed to the usual 60:40). Goila calls his butter chicken ‘a hug in a bowl’.

He is not the only butter chicken re-mixer, though. There’s Urvashi Pitre, a.k.a. the Butter Chicken Lady, with her instant pot murgh makhani in Southlake, Texas (USA). There are butter chicken rotis in Canada and butter chicken tacos that didn’t go down well in New York. The Kiwis love butter chicken so much that McDonald’s introduced butter chicken pie in New Zealand. Story is that as soon as the COVID lockdown ended, Kiwis ordered more than 1,300 butter chicken dishes from one restaurant in 89 days. Closer home, there is also a spinoff, celebrity chef Saransh Goila's sweeter version at Goila Butter Chicken.

Cooks Without Borders created a special butter chicken dish for the first-ever World Butter Chicken Day, October 20, 2020. The recipe was adapted from Chef Monish Gujral's (grandson of Kundan Lal Gujral) The Moti Mahal Cookbook: On the Butter Chicken Trail.