The first module introduces the term hijṛā, also known today as kinnar. Since 2019 hijṛās, specifically, as an organized group under the banner of Kinnar Akhāṛā, a monastic group, (although akhāṛā can also mean a wrestling arena), are rapidly taking center stage in certain Hindu ritual spaces. They are coming from the fringes to becoming mainstream ritual specialists; in this shift, they are claiming—I would argue reclaiming—their space, especially in fertility rituals.

These are temple women who are "married women"— but legally unmarried — who play a pivotal role in the training of the male gurus and are required for the successful completion of certain esoteric rituals. Simply put, these women are highly trained in ritualized sex. For example, they provide instructions on how not to release bodily fluids with the help of controlled breathing. They embody and negotiate a complex social and religious space. Their agency, status, and reputation are different within the temple setting and outside the temple walls.

They are the Tantric daughters and Tantric sisters, as understood in the biological-genealogical terms, who eventually become Tantric wives. From an early age, the girls receive extensive training on how to perform pūjās, learn mantras, fast on certain days, follow segregation during menstruation because they are believed to become impure for three days, and remain chaste until they get married. They serve dual roles in the ritual space: To their husbands' they provide their body and bodily fluids for the advancement of their husband's practice. The question here is if that is a matter of choice. And what is the level of female agency?

Women gurus are the most powerful group of women in the world of Hindu Śākta Tantra. Power and authority in this space as in most organized religion is characterized by two countervailing forces. One of the forces seeks to preserve the definitiveness of the foundational religious experience using external authoritative mechanisms of centralized control, which has largely been men in the context of Hindu Śākta Tantra. The other attempts to preserve the living relationship of the core religious encounter through an internal radical dispersion of religious power. Woman gurus seem to successfully relate to both here. By doing so they also collectively challenge the phallocentric nature of Tantra.