Cornelia Sorabji : First Parsi Indian woman to study at Oxford

Cornelia Sorabji, India's first female advocate, broke barriers as the first woman to study law at Oxford and fought for the legal rights of purdahnashin women in India. Despite her early reform work, her later pro-empire stance and opposition to Gandhi's nationalism left a complex legacy in the struggle for social justice.

Reading in Britain at a time when women did not even have the right to study was an uphill task for Cornelia Sorabji, a Parsi woman who became not only India’s first woman to study at Oxford but also the first to study law there.

Cornelia Sorabji, who graduated from Bombay University, was the first woman to achieve this distinction. Named after her grandmother, Lady Cornelia Maria Darling Ford, she was one of ten children. Her father, the Reverend Sorabji Karsedji, had converted from Zoroastrianism to Christianity and was a missionary. Karsedji convinced Bombay University to admit women to its degree programmes.

During her lifetime, Cornelia was deeply involved in social work and became a fierce advocate for women’s education in India.

She played a pivotal role in advising and assisting purdahnashins (women who were forbidden from communicating with the outside male world).

Cornelia believed that until all women were educated, political reform would not have genuine, lasting value. Although her stance against Indian self-rule was criticised, her primary concern was that drastic changes could harm India's cultural roots.

These views, however, hindered her ability to gain support for her later social reform efforts. Sorabji authored multiple publications which were influential in the early 20th century.

OXFORD AND CORNELIA SORABJI

Cornelia Sorabji's academic journey was groundbreaking, though marked by challenges that reflected the inequalities of her time. After excelling in her finals at Deccan College, where she earned a first-class distinction, Sorabji would usually have qualified for a Government of India scholarship to pursue further studies.

However, being a woman, she was denied this opportunity. Undeterred, she applied for financial aid from the National Indian Association and, in 1889, made her way to England to study at Somerville College, Oxford, with the original intent of studying medicine.

Significant reforms made her arrival at Oxford possible, particularly the University Test Acts of 1871, which allowed non-Anglican students and women to enrol. Somerville College, along with Lady Margaret Hall, was one of the first institutions to admit women, and it welcomed a diverse group of students, including Sorabji, who was one of the 49 Indian students at Oxford between 1871 and 1893.

However, Sorabji soon shifted her focus from medicine to law. Growing up in India, she had witnessed the legal struggles faced by Purdahnashin women, those confined within their homes by social and religious customs.

This motivated her to pursue a legal career to help these women navigate the complexities of the law.

As the first Indian woman at Somerville, Sorabji faced both privilege and prejudice. While she was granted certain benefits, like a fire in her accommodation, she also encountered condescension from some tutors and the occasional cultural insensitivity. She recalled how some individuals, unaware of her Christian faith, would attempt to convert her, remarking that she looked "so very heathen."

In 1892, Sorabji made history by becoming the first woman allowed to sit for the Bachelor in Civil Law exam at Oxford. However, since women were not permitted to matriculate as full students until 1920, she was unable to formally graduate with a degree.

Despite this, she continued to break barriers, becoming the first woman admitted as a reader at All Souls' Codrington Library. Her academic and legal achievements paved the way for women in law, both in India and abroad.

A VOICE FOR SOCIAL REFORMS

In 1894, Cornelia Sorabji returned to India and became involved in social and advisory work on behalf of Purdahnashins. In many cases, these women owned considerable property but lacked access to the necessary legal expertise to defend it. Sorabji was given special permission to enter pleas on their behalf before British agents in the Kathiawar and Indore principalities.

However, she could not defend them in court, as she did not hold professional standing in the Indian legal system due to her gender. It was not until 1902 that she began petitioning the India Office to provide a female legal advisor to represent women and minors in provincial courts. Within two years, she was appointed Lady Assistant to the Court of Wards by 1907.

The next 20 years of Sorabji’s career were marked by significant milestones, as she helped over 600 women and orphans with legal battles, often offering her services for free. She became the first female advocate in India but was not officially recognised as a barrister until 1923, when the law preventing women from practising was changed.

However, by the late 1920s, her views shifted, becoming staunchly pro-Empire and anti-nationalist. She even endorsed Katherine Mayo’s Mother India and opposed Gandhi’s civil disobedience, a stance that distanced her from reform movements and slowed her later efforts.

Despite these contradictions, Sorabji’s early work remains influential, bridging Indian traditions and Western legal principles. Historian Geraldine Forbes noted that her complex legacy reflects the tensions between nationalism, feminism, and colonial influence in India’s early 20th-century social reforms.