Google pays tribute to Cornelia Sorabji on her 151st birthday

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Cornelia Sorabji (15 November 1866 – 6 July 1954) was an Indian woman who achieved several notable firsts: the first female graduate from Bombay University, the first woman to read law at Oxford University (indeed, the first Indian national to study at any British university, the first female advocate in India, and the first woman to practise law in India and Britain.

In 2012, her bust was unveiled at Lincoln's Inn, London.

Born in Nashik, she was one of nine children of Reverend Sorabji Karsedji, a Parsi, and his wife, Francina Ford, a Parsi who had been adopted and raised by a British couple. Her father was a missionary and Sorabji claims that he was a key figure in convincing Bombay University to admit women to their degree programs. Her mother helped to establish several girls' schools in Poona (now Pune). Due in part to her influential social position, she was often consulted by local women in matters pertaining to inheritance and property rights. Many of Sorabji's later educational and career decisions would be heavily influenced by her mother.

At the turn of the century, Sorabji was also actively involved in social reforms. She was associated with the Bengal branch of the National Council for Women in India, the Federation of University Women, and the Bengal League of Social Service for Women. For her services to the Indian nation, she was awarded the Kaisar-i-Hind Gold Medal in 1909. Although an Anglophile, Sorabji had no desire to see "the wholesale imposition of a British legal system on Indian society any more than she sought the transplantation of other Western values."^[11] Early in her career, Sorabji had supported the campaign for Indian Independence, relating women's rights to the capacity for self-government. Although she greatly supported traditional Indian life and culture, Sorabji did a great deal to promote the movement to reform Hindu laws regarding child marriage and the position of widows. She often worked alongside fellow reformer and friend Pandita Ramabai. Nevertheless, she believed that the true impetus behind social change was education and that, until the majority of illiterate women had access to it, the suffrage movement would be a failure.