Legal legend honoured
LAST week Google honoured Cornelia Sorabji, India’s first woman lawyer, on her 151st birth anniversary with a doodle. Cornelia Sorabji was born to Parsi priest Sorabji Karsedji and Francina Ford on November 15, 1866, in Nashik’s Deolali in Maharashtra (Bombay Presidency).
She was one of nine siblings but Sorabji went on to carve her own niche in the country’s legal history with several firsts to her credit.
Google saluted her many achievements – the first woman graduate of the University of Bombay (now Mumbai); first woman lawyer of India, who practised at Allahabad High Court; first woman to get admission to a British university (Oxford); and the first woman to practise law both in India and Britain at the height of the Indian freedom struggle.
The doodle was designed by Jasjyot Singh Hans and shows Sorabji outside the Allahabad High Court, where she launched her practice, in a lawyer’s robe comprising a black gown, a white band and even a white wig.
From Nashik, she moved and spent part of her childhood in Belgaum (now Karnataka) and Poona (now Pune) and studied in the Deccan College, graduating with high rankings from the University of Bombay in the mid-1880s. She briefly worked at a men’s college in Gujarat as a teacher, and in 1888 sought assistance from the National Indian Association in the UK to pursue higher education.
Sorabji received support from many Britons, including Arthur and his wife Mary Hobhouse, Florence Nightingale, Sir William Wedderburn and others. She travelled to England in 1889 and lived with the Hobhouses.
After clearing many obstacles, she became the first woman to join Somerset College, Oxford, for a Bachelor in Civil Laws degree in 1892, with special permission.
Returning to India in 1894, she plunged into social service and legal advisory work, especially for “purda-nashin” women from wealthy or royal families, who had no means to defend their wealth and properties. Sorabji secured special permission to file pleas on their behalf, yet could not represent them in the courts.
In 1897, she graduated with an LLB from the University of Bombay and passed the government pleader’s exam from Allahabad High Court in 1899. She was recognised as a barrister only after laws barring women from the legal fraternity were changed in 1923. She died on July 6, 1954. – IANS