GATE Sociology 2027 Syllabus (XH-C6 → XH6): Every Change, Line by Line

For GATE 2027 the Sociology section has a new code and a revised syllabus. IIT Madras has renamed the Humanities sections: XH-C6 Sociology becomes XH6, and the compulsory Reasoning and Comprehension part, XH-B1, becomes XH0. The eight Sociology sections keep their titles and their order, from 6.1 Sociological Theory to 6.8 Sociology of Development. But five of the eight have changed wording: 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.6 and 6.8. Some changes are small, a name added to a list. Others remove whole blocks that students have been revising for years, including sustainable development and the State and Market block with “Globalisation and Liberalization”. This guide sets out every change against the 2026 text, then checks which of the added and dropped lines the last four papers actually asked.

GATE 2027 brochure and syllabi; the counts are ours, from the official papers and final keys.

The Humanities paper has three parts. General Aptitude and Reasoning and Comprehension are common to every Humanities candidate. The optional section, which for you is Sociology, is ranked separately: the brochure gives a separate score and rank for each section, so a GATE Sociology rank is a rank among Sociology candidates only. Marks and question counts are unchanged between 2026 and 2027; the codes and the syllabus wording changed.

Only multiple-choice questions (MCQs) carry negative marks: −1/3 on a one-mark and −2/3 on a two-mark question. Multiple-select questions (MSQs) and numerical-answer questions (NATs) carry none. Sociology has set no NAT questions at all in 2022–2026, so in practice the section is MCQ and MSQ only. If you want to write a second paper, XH can be paired only with ST (Statistics), and you cannot write two XH sections.

We compared the 2026 XH-C6 PDF (IIT Guwahati) with the 2027 XH6 text phrase by phrase, using the brochure’s reproduction on pages 132–133 and the standalone 2027 XH6 PDF, which carry the same text. Sections 6.4 (Agrarian Sociology), 6.5 (Family, Marriage and Kinship) and 6.7 (Social Movements) are word for word the same apart from the new “XH6.n” labels.

Three readings are ours rather than IIT Madras’s, and worth stating plainly. First, the last block of 6.8 has been reframed more than rewritten. Feminist critique, human development, alternative development paradigms and Escobar were all in the 2026 text; what is new is the heading “Development and its critique”, the word “post-development” in place of “post-structural”, and “development induced dispossession”. What left is sustainable development and “Development, violence and inequality”. Second, globalization has not left the syllabus. It is still in 6.3 (“Social Transformations and Globalization”) and in 6.7 (“Social Movements, Civil Society and Globalization”), and “Post-colonial development” is still in 6.8. Only 6.8’s “Globalisation and Liberalization” line went. Third, Desai and Beteille are not new names: section 6.6 already cited them for the dialectical approach and agrarian sociology. Their addition to the 6.1 list of Indian thinkers means their wider work is now fair game.

We classified every Sociology question of the 2023–2026 papers against the 2027 sections and marked those that depend on a line the 2027 syllabus no longer carries. There are only three, worth five marks between them. Treat them as out of scope for 2027 practice, although nothing stops a setter from asking about a thinker or concept that is not named.

The same classification shows that several of the “new” names were being asked already. Coser appeared in 2023 Q62, a question on conflict theorists that paired him with Dahrendorf. Popper and Kuhn appeared in 2023 Q52 and 2024 Q27 under the old unnamed “Philosophy of Science”. Westernization, Srinivas’s pair to Sanskritization, came up in 2025 Q35. The 2027 syllabus has named what the setters were already testing. Statistics was already being asked too (seven questions in 2023–2026, all MCQs). For the other additions (Althusser, etic and emic, Oommen and dispossession), there is no recent question to learn from.

The changes fall unevenly across the paper. By our count of 2023–2026, Sociological Theory (6.1) carried the most marks, an average of 15.25 of 60, and it has three of the changes. Indian Society (6.6) averaged 11.0 and gained one name. Sociological Concepts (6.3) averaged 10.25 and gained one word. Research Methodology (6.2) averaged 8.75 and changed in several lines. Sociology of Development (6.8), where the biggest removals are, averaged only 4.75, and just 1 mark in 2026. The changes are therefore smaller in marks than they look on the page.

If you prepared on the 2026 syllabus, the adjustment is modest. Drop the sustainable-development material and the State and Market block from your revision list, but keep globalization, because 6.3 and 6.7 still name it. Replace C. Wright Mills in your conflict-theory notes with Coser and Althusser. Read Popper and Kuhn properly rather than as a line in the philosophy-of-science chapter. Add an afternoon each on etic and emic approaches, Westernization and Oommen. Revise basic statistics, which the section has asked about seven times in four papers even before “Statistical Methods” was named. Finally, read Desai and Beteille as theorists, not only as names attached to agrarian studies.

One caution about old study material. Many guides, question banks and notes still follow the 2026 wording, including lists that tell you to revise sustainable development, and some give the wrong number of Sociology questions. Check any list you use against the 2027 table above. The official papers remain the best practice material; just skip the three questions listed earlier when you mark your score.

The compulsory 25-mark part keeps its content under the new code XH0, in four subsections: Reading Comprehension, Expression, Analytical Reasoning and Logical Reasoning. It is the same paper for all six Humanities sections, so the separate XH0 guide in our cluster, linked at the foot of this page, applies to Sociology candidates unchanged. By our count of the 2023–2026 papers, analytical puzzles carried most of its marks, not reading passages.