The Gandhigram Rural Institute was started in 1956. Hindi training programmes were conducted in GRI from the beginning. The University Grants Commission, New Delhi in 1976 conferred GRI the status of Deemed University and the Department of Hindi is functioning under the School of Tamil, Indian Languages and Rural Arts.

The Department of Hindi has got full-fledged Department status since 2004. Gandhigram Rural Institute is the only Institute which has been following three languages formula in Tamil Nadu. Core-Hindi is a compulsory paper and all the UG and 5yr.Int. students must pass Core-Hindi paper to qualify for the degree. Apart from UG Courses Department of Hindi offers M.A. Hindi, Ph.D. Programmes and Certificate Course in Spoken Hindi also. The thrust areas of research are Language Teaching, Comparative Studies and Translation.