Many firsts

OPENING DOORS: THE UNTOLD STORY OF CORNELIA SORABJI
By Richard Sorabji, Penguin, Rs 499

Cornelia Sorabji was the first woman barrister of India, and a remarkable lady in other ways too. A Christian Parsi, she opted to practise law — then considered to be an exclusively male domain — and sympathized with ‘the nation in the making’ without agreeing to the overthrow of the Empire. Sorabji discovered the pardanashins or secluded women who were largely neglected in early 20th century nationalist discourses. She was also reluctant to accept Tagore and Gandhi as potential leaders of the emergent nation. Moreover, her moral support to Katherine Mayo, whose book, Mother India, castigated Hinduism for the plight of Indians, led to her being marginalized in Indian politics.

Opening Doors, by Richard Sorabji — Cornelia’s nephew and a scholar of philosophy — focuses on her pioneering role in British India. From journeying to study in Oxford to pleading in the court of the British empire as a woman and upholding the cause of the pardanashins, Cornelia broke new ground in many ways. The book also offers a historical perspective of how and why Cornelia and India misunderstood each other.

The biography is interspersed with interesting anecdotes of Cornelia’s resilience and sangfroid. The account of her escape from Tihur Fort with the rani by hoodwinking the maharaja’s assassins is breathtaking. The book is devoid of moral squeamishness with regard to Cornelia’s love life. Richard sensitively delineates her affair with the married judge, Falkner Blair, a man almost twice her age.

A significant part of the book is rightfully devoted to Cornelia’s unsurpassed work with Hindu and Muslim pardanashins. In her autobiography, India Calling, as well as in Love and Life Behind the Purdah, Cornelia scripts stunning accounts of these invisible women. But here too, she remains controversial by suggesting that the purdah should not be done away with altogether. Cornelia, Richard writes, believed in reform from within the system. She took strong exception to the Brahmo Samaj’s aggressive reform movements as she believed that as a minority, the Brahmos had no right to effect reforms within traditional Hindu households. Little wonder then that her views transformed Cornelia into a bête noire of the liberal-minded Indian elite.

Richard depicts the dynamics of Cornelia’s relations with the nationalist leaders with care. She revered Gopal Krishna Gokhale, but was a staunch critic of Gandhi’s Non-cooperation and Civil Disobedience movements. Her anti-Gandhianism, Richard writes, could also be attributed to the fact that these movements and the Swarajists’ aggressive fund collection impinged on her work with the pardanashins.

Cornelia’s persona seemed to have been split into non-cohesive selves. Her courage, outspokenness and fierce individuality were not unproblematic. But Richard’s ‘untold story’ persuades history and readers to not be unduly unkind to her.