Cornelia sorabji autobiography in five shorts

It isn’t an uncommon sight to watch firebrand women in the black fight for human rights in the courts of law.

Indira Jaising, Flavia Agnes, Kamini Jaiswal, Meenakshi Lekhi, Karuna Nundy, Vrinda Grover, Rebecca John – the list of noteworthy women lawyers in India is neverending.

But did you know? Who fought for these exceptional women to hold their heads high and argue in the court of law as early as 1924?

Born in 1866, Cornelia Sorabji, was India’s first woman lawyer.

Cornelia had a series of firsts to her credit. She was the first female graduate of Bombay University to be admitted to the Allahabad High Court. In 1889, she became the first woman to read law at Oxford University, and also the first Indian to study at any British university.

Last but certainly not the least, she became the first woman to practise law, not only in India but also in the whole of Britain.

Born to Reverend Sorabji Karsedji, a Parsi, and his wife, Francina Ford (a Parsi, adopted and raised by a British couple), Cornelia was one of the nine children in the Sorabji household.

Francina was a champion of women’s education and established several girls’ schools in Pune. She would often be consulted by local women in matters of property inheritance and disputes and served as a great influence to a young Cornelia.

Cornelia was homeschooled by her father at several of their mission schools.

While her father ran pillar to post to get his two oldest daughters into Bombay University, the authorities wouldn’t budge. They were refused admission on the grounds that no woman had ever been to university. But Cornelia was the only one among the lot to finally get entrance and matriculated at the age of 16.

At college, it was an everyday sight to see boys slamming classroom doors in her face to sabotage her chances of attending lectures. They seemed threatened that a girl had

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Be it Sudha Gupta or Super Spy Gulabi, these female detectives from Indian literature are unique in their own ways.

Miss Marple, Nancy Drew, Agent Starling–these names instantly come to us when asked about female detectives in literature. A little more head-scratching and we might come up with names like Lisbeth Salander, Bertha Cool or Sharon McCone.

But we feel a serious dearth of names when it comes to female detectives in Indian literature. Don’t be disappointed though. The ‘desi’ Miss Marple or Nancy Drew is around us, we just need to sharpen our observation skills to find them.

So, here are some remarkable characters, which are not simply the indigenous versions of their counterparts, but more. These crime-solving ladies are in their own league.

Lalli-Kalpana Swaminathan

Kalpana Swaminathan’s police force retiree sexagenarian Lalli first appeared in Cryptic Death, in 1997. Full of elegance and style, the observant detective is often accompanied by her niece Sita on crime adventures that generally find its motives rooted in very humane characteristics like greed, jealousy or lust.

She has every quality of a quintessential detective–she is erratic, has a detail-oriented mind and her deductive skills are top-notch. Though niece Sita states that she is ‘nondescript’, the curious sleuth might remind one of the legendary Miss Marple.

However, the differentiating factor between the two is Lalli’s acquaintance with self-defence and her impeccable shooting skills. The last resort of the Mumbai police makes her latest appearance in ‘Murder in Seven Acts: Lalli Mysteries’, where she faces a serial killer attacking the kids of Mumbai’s Kandewadi slum.

Sudha Gupta-Ambai

Feminist Tamil writer CS Lakshmi, also known by her pen name Ambai brings to us another elderly sleuth, Sudha Gupta who appears in a series of three novellas titled ‘Sudha Gupta Investigates: A Meet

 Julia Spencer-Fleming: As you might guess, I have a soft spot for the winners of the Minotaur Best First Mystery contests. Steve Hamilton, Donna Andrews, Michael Koryta and I all started our careers by winning one of the awards, and now it's Nev March's turn, with Murder in Old Bombay.

Reviews for her debut historical, set in 1890s India, use words like "sumptous," "thrilling," "authentic" and "lyrical." Robin Agnew, of the beloved Aunt Agatha's Books, named Murder in Old Bombayone of the Top Ten Mysteries of 2020. (You'll have a chance to judge for yourself - we're giving away a copy to one lucky commenter!)

 Murder in Old Bombay is an own-voices dive into gender, caste and colonialism, all wrapped in a clever mystery tackled by Anglo-Indian army captain Jim Agnihotri, who loves Sherlock Holmes stories. He's a man accustomed to a man's world, but, as Nev march tells us, he has to immerse himself in the lives of 19th century Indian women to solve his case.

My novel Murder in Old Bombay is a hunt for justice that uncovers both, a secret plot and the not-so-secret ways that women in India were--and sometimes still are--devalued. However, I did not begin with a plan to write about it.

In India, crime against women takes uniquely peculiar forms: dowry deaths of brides burned in so-called kitchen accidents because their father could not pay a larger dowry to greedy in-laws, the honor killing of daughters who had the temerity to run off with a lower caste lover, and more. In recent years the rape and murder of women in India has risen to outrageous levels. Decades ago, while still in college I heard about awful incidents that were never reported; police were ill-prepared to deal with rape victims, and the prevalent notion was that the victim was somehow responsible—she ‘asked for it’ by leading on the perpetrator, dressed provocatively, or put herself at risk by being at an unsafe place. Perhaps the recent rise in numbers

Brown History - an Instagram page started by a 31-year-old Karachi-born - has lesser-known, gripping tales about humans of South Asia

Do you remember Cornelia Sorabji, the first woman to graduate from Bombay University and study law at Oxford University? Or Amrita Sher-Gil, who died at the age of 28, but established herself as one of South Asia's most celebrated artists? Does Indrani Rahman, the first Indian to compete in the Miss Universe beauty pageant in 1952, ring a bell? If not, an Instagram page started by a 31-year-old Karachi-born will come in handy.

When Ahsun Zafar, an electrical engineer in the aerospace industry in Montreal, started Brown History in September 2017, out of sheer curiosity to understand his roots in South Asia better, little did he know that the page would get a whopping 55k followers in one year. While his father is Pakistani and mother half-Pakistani, half-Irani, his maternal great-grandfather taught at Aligarh University and his maternal grandfather was a student there. "Everyone ended up in Pakistan after Partition. However, I grew up in Canada and knew very little of South Asia except for what I had seen on TV," he says.

"Therefore, with an agenda to learn more of my roots, I researched a lot and learned that there was a time when we all lived together as one community. In that mindset, I made @brownhistory. And it's important, too, because when you have an understanding of your roots, you also obtain a strong sense of identity and that gives you the strength to go through life, which can be a daunting task. One's history is like the foundation of a skyscraper; only when it's strong and sturdy can it make it to the skies."

Ahsun Zafar

The page offers historical vignettes of South Asia, and is followed by quite a few B-town celebri