India and Pakistan have had no shortage of disputes, most notably over territory in Jammu & Kashmir, where tensions run high between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
And while a spat over the origins of a little-known variety of mango is hardly a geopolitical game-changer, it has farmers in northern India up in arms against what they call deception by Pakistan.
Anwar Rataul is considered the king of mangoes because of its succulent juices and tempting bouquet. That's why the farmers are threatening to take Islamabad to the International Court of Justice for having obtained a global patent for the variety. They claim the fruit was first grown in India several decades before farmers in Multan, in Pakistan's Punjab province, began cultivating it.
"Anwar Rataul was one of 461 varieties that my grandfather, Sheikh Mohammad Afaq, grew in his Shohra-I-Afaq nursery as far back as in 1928," says Junaid Faridi, who owns a five-hectare mango orchard in Rataul, a sprawling village in western Uttar Pradesh, 40 kilometres northeast of New Delhi.
"He sent the plants to Damodar Swarup, Hafizullah Khan and Peer Baksh, his friends in Multan, in 1945, after which they established a nursery there."
Faridi, a former head of the Rataul panchayat (village council), says his grandfather named the variety after his grandmother, Anwar Khatun.
The Rataul Mango Producers Association (RMPA) and the Diversified Agriculture Support Project run by the Uttar Pradesh state government applied for a patent for Anwar Rataul from the central government's Intellectual Property Office (IPO) in August 2012 and have been waiting ever since to hear back.
"The IPO made some queries which I replied to. Once it gets patented I will approach the international court against Pakistan," said Faridi, who is also the secretary of the RMPA.
Chaudhary Hashim Chauhan enjoys a home-grown Chausa mango, one of many tasty varieties grown in Rataul in northern India. Photos: Narendra Kaushik
His sentiment is shared by most of the 185 mango growers in Rataul. "Anwar Rataul is our baby. It belongs to us and went to Pakistan from here. How can they claim it?" asks Chaudhary Hashim Chauhan, a village elder, as he draws in a puff from a hookah.
Faiz Mahboob, a son of Meirajuddin, a former state minister and owner of a large mango orchard in Rataul, endorses the local growers' stand. "The variety travelled to Pakistan from here. Mohammad Afaq developed it here," he says, standing under an Anwar Rataul tree in his orchard.
Unlike other mango varieties -- Chausa, Langra, Safeda, Daseri and hundreds of others grown in Rataul -- Anwar Rataul is smaller in size, lemon-yellow in colour and has a sweeter bouquet. It fetches prices four or five times more than for other varieties.
"This year we had a bumper crop of Anwar Rataul. It sold at 200 rupees (105 baht) per kilogramme, the price of Alphonso (an expensive variety produced in Maharashtra)," says Mahboob, a university student.
However, Junaid Faridi is not the only person claiming "parenthood" of Rataul on behalf of an ancestor. Rahat Abrar, director of the Urdu Academy at Aligarh Muslim University in Uttar Pradesh, says that his uncle Abrarul Haq migrated with cuttings for the plant to Pakistan after the partition of India in 1947.
"The variety is named after Anwarul Haq, my grandfather, who had an orchard in Rataul," he said in a telephone interview with Asia Focus.
Abrar's claim is supported by Zahoor Siddiqi, a retired history professor of Delhi University and a resident of Rataul. Siddiqi, who presented a research paper on Rataul mangoes at a seminar in Malda, West Bengal in December last year, says that Abrarul promoted the name of Anwar Rataul in Multan when he migrated there around 1956.
Siddiqi rebutted the claim by Faridi, saying that even the latter's grandfather had written that (Anwar) Rataul originated at Mubarak Bagh, an orchard owned by Mubarak Ali, the father of Anwarul and great-grandfather of Abrar, in his nursery catalogue.
The mango growers of Rataul village first learned of Pakistan's claim in 1981 when then-President Zia-ul-Haq presented Prime Minister Indira Gandhi with a gift basket full of "special mangoes from Pakistan".
Gandhi wrote a letter of appreciation to the Pakistani head of state, saying that she liked the mangoes "only available in Pakistan". When mango farmers in Rataul heard about this, they presented Gandhi with a basket of the fruit and explained that the variety was born in India and not in Pakistan. Subsequently, Gandhi sent the fruits to Zia.
Grower Mohammad Wazid gathers some mangoes from his plantation in Rataul. "This is our heritage," he says. Narendra Kaushik
To this day the growers regularly send top-quality Anwar Rataul mangoes to Indian executives and political leaders to press their point. "We send the baskets to major dignitaries in the country including the president, the prime minister and heads of political parties every season," Mahboob says.
The community of 15,000 people also boasts a 100-year-old mango tree, and the RMPA celebrated its centenary in 2012. "This is our heritage," says Mohammad Wazid, an orchard worker.
It is almost mandatory in the village to welcome guests with sliced mangoes or mango juice during the season, when vendors set up stalls selling fruit on either side of the road leading to the village.
However, the growers in Rataul concede that their counterparts in Pakistan have an advantage over them.
"Pakistan exports Anwar Rataul. We do not because there is no seaport in northern India. It is expensive to transport the fruit by air," says grower Babar Chauhan.
India is the largest producer of mangoes in the world, accounting for 50% of the global harvest. The country produced 15 million tonnes of more than a thousand varieties of mangoes in 2014. Other major producers are China, Thailand, Indonesia, Pakistan and Mexico.
The mangoes grow between late April and early August every year. February to April and August are considered suitable for planting.
However, the fact remains that Pakistan has had Anwar Rataul patented. It is even featured along with three other mango varieties on a four-rupee postage stamp that is part of the "Fruits of Pakistan" series.