Cornelia Sorabji

Cornelia Sorabji, who lived from November 15, 1866, to July 6, 1954, was the first woman to graduate from Bombay University and the first woman to study law at Oxford University. After passing the necessary examinations in 1897 and 1899 she became the first female legal advocate in India, though the English-derived law barring women from practicing as barristers meant she was not formally recognized as a barrister until that restriction was lifted in 1923. Returning to India, she devoted much of her career to representing purdahnashins, women confined by custom from appearing in public who needed legal help with property and family matters, assisting an estimated six hundred women and orphans over two decades, often without charging a fee. She was also a prolific writer on Indian women's issues, though she opposed rapid social change and Western-influenced reform movements, arguing that education needed to precede political change and supporting continued British rule in India, positions that limited her later influence on the reform movements she had once championed.