The Department of Sociology was established in 1996. To begin with, the Department trained students for three courses: B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. The Department has a coordinated programme of teaching and research covering a variety of fields, Studies have been published or prepared on community power structures, local-level politics, trade unions, co-operatives, textual and contextual studies of Hinduism, religious symbolism, family and kinship, and social and religious movements. Studies have also been conducted in the fields of stratification, gender, environment, the sociology of development, historical sociology, urban sociology. The sociology of masculinity, demography, popular culture, education, migration, the sociology of violence and documentary practices of the state are some of the new areas that faculty members are working on at present. The Department has been visited by a large number of distinguished scholars from India. who have delivered lectures and given seminars, some of them as Visiting Professors and Fellows. The Department draws students from different parts of India and universities.