Born in Nashik, Maharashtra, in British India, 1866, Cornelia Sorabji was the first female advocate in India, and the first woman to practice law in India.
Google, on Wednesday, honored Cornelia Sorabji, India’s first woman lawyer, through a doodle on the occasion of her 151st birth anniversary.
Born in Nashik, Maharashtra, in British India, 1866, Sorabji was the first female advocate in India, and the first woman to practice law in India and Britain. She was also was the first female graduate of Bombay University.
Sorabji was the first woman permitted to attend Bombay University, where she excelled. She then went on to become the first Indian woman to study law at Oxford University in 1892.
However, women were not awarded degrees by Oxford in those days (a rule that would eventually change 30 years later in 1922), making her unable to practice law in England.
Sorabji returned to India in 1894 where she was again barred from practicing her profession. However, this didn’t deter her. She eventually became legal advisor to the government for the purdahnashins — veiled women forbidden by social custom from communicating with males from the outside world.
When widowed, these women were often entitled to their husbands’ estates, but their isolation prevented them from seeking legal help to enforce their rights (all lawyers being male).
Sorabji tirelessly fought for the rights of the purdahnashins and even earned them the right to be trained in nursing, which gave them the opportunity to work outside their homes.
The first woman advocate to join the Allahabad High Court bar, Sorabji fought for the rights of women to pursue education. She was a pioneer who opened up legal profession to women.
The Doodle by illustrator Jasjyot Singh Hans depicts Sorabji in front of the Allahabad High Court.
“On what would have been her 151st birthday, we celebrate Cornelia Sorabji for breaking that first glass ceiling and for her persistence in the face of great adversity,” Google’s doodle page said.