Google’s Doodle celebrates the birth and remembrance of people and of various inventions. Just yesterday it celebrated the history of the hole punch. Today, let’s see who Doodle remembers.
On November 15 Doodle celebrated the 151st birth anniversary of Cornelia Sorabji — an inspiring woman with many firsts to her name. From being the first woman to practice law in India and Britain to be the first woman to graduate from Bombay University and then eventually becoming the first to study in any British university — Sorabji had many feathers to her hat.
She was born in the year 1866 in Bombay’s Nashik as one of the nine children to Reverend Sorabji Karsedji and his wife Francina Ford. Her father, apparently, was a key figure in facilitating women’s education and helping women get their degree education from Bombay University. Her mother too is reported to have established many schools in Pune for girl child education.
Having become the first woman to complete education from Bombay University, she wrote to the National Indian Association asking for assistance to pursue further education and many like Florence Nightingale, Mary Hobhouse, Adelaide Manning, Sir William Wedderburn contributed to the funds that went into her education.
After completing her education at the Oxford University, when Sorabji returned to India, she began providing legal support to women known as purdahnashins, who weren’t allowed to have any communication with men, according to religious texts. These were women with the property but did not know how to defend their cases legally because all lawyers back then were males.
Cornelia began to petition the India Office to provide for a female legal advisor to represent women and minors in provincial courts. In 1904, she was appointed the Lady Assistant to the Court of Wards of Bengal and she started to work in the provinces of Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, and Assam. It is estimated that in her next 20 years of service, Cornelia Sorabji helped over 600 women and children. Allegedly she would even provide her services at no charge.
In 1924, the profession of law was finally opened to women in India, allowing them to fight cases in the court. Cornelia Sorabji began to practice in Kolkata, hence becoming the first woman to practice law in India, and indeed, in Britain.
She also wrote short stories, articles and her autobiography ‘Between the Twilights’. She retired from law in high court in 1929 and died on July 6, 1954, at her London home.
Google’s doodle was created by Jasjyot Singh Hans and depicts Ms. Sorabji in front of the high court to which she was eventually admitted.
It was designed to mark her “persistence in the face of great adversity”, Google said.
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