New Delhi, March 17 -- The academia of gender and religion has been too inclined to believe that South Asian feminine spiritual expression was mostly sidelined or entirely devotional. However, as a study of matrilineal inheritance, female saints and women-centred institutions show the opposite narrative. Today the theology of Shakti can be understood as a reform tool. In Sanatana Dharma, Shakti is the essential impulse as a creation, maintenance and change, which now manifests into tangible forms of education, health and the grassroot welfare. Archetypical powers of goddesses are turned into pragmatic social change in the modern world: Durga is the anti-evil, anti-corruption power; Lakshmi is the power of rural entrepreneurship, independe...