Sugar in Indian Languages: What It's Called Across India

When you hear sugar, a basic sweetener used in everything from chai to desserts across India. Also known as shakkar, it sakkara, it’s not just a ingredient—it’s a word that changes with every state you cross. In Hindi, it’s shakkar. In Tamil, it’s sakkara. In Bengali, shukur. In Punjabi, shakkar. In Telugu, ellu (though that’s more often sesame, context matters). These aren’t just translations—they’re cultural fingerprints. Every name carries a history of trade, colonial influence, and home kitchens that never needed a dictionary to know what sweetened their tea.

These words didn’t come from textbooks. They came from street vendors calling out "Shakkar wali chai!", from grandmothers measuring sakkara by hand in clay bowls, from mothers stirring shukur into rice pudding for kids after school. Even today, if you ask for white sugar in a rural market in Odisha, you might hear khanda—a term tied to traditional jaggery-making methods. In Kerala, you’ll find perukku for refined sugar, while in Maharashtra, sheera sometimes refers to both the sweet dish and the sugar used to make it. The same substance, dozens of names. And each one tells you something about how that region eats, celebrates, and survives.

Understanding these terms isn’t just about language—it’s about cooking right. If a recipe says "add sakkara" and you’re in Delhi, you might grab white granulated sugar. But if you’re in Chennai and you use white sugar instead of jaggery when the recipe calls for sakkara, you’ll miss the deep, molasses-like richness that’s part of the dish’s soul. Sugar isn’t just sweet. It’s context. It’s tradition. It’s the difference between a dish that tastes familiar and one that tastes home.

Below, you’ll find real posts from home cooks who’ve wrestled with these words—how they substituted sugar in paneer recipes, why chutney needs the right kind of sweetness, and how street food vendors in Mumbai measure sweetness by instinct, not spoons. These aren’t just recipes. They’re lessons in how India tastes.