GRID Meeting with Professor Richard Sorabji

GRID had arranged a meeting with Professor Richard Sorabji on 29^th January 2010. Sorabji is Professor Emeritus in Philosophy at the University College of London and has published extensively on Greek Philosophy and is currently working on a comparative study of the Stoic philosophers and Gandhi. He is the nephew of Cornelia Sorabji, Bombay University’s first woman graduate and the first woman lawyer in India.  

The meeting, which was attended by the GRID members and postgraduate students, was interactive in nature, where Sorabji spoke of his aunt’s struggle with the authorities, in her effort to practice Law as a profession that hitherto had only male practitioners.  

The discussion also threw light on Cornelia Sorabji’s relation with Pandita Ramabai and the situation of the Purdahnashins in colonial India and her work that centred around them.  

He also spoke about the time that Cornelia had spent in England as a student of Law at the Oxford University and then her years in London, where she spent her retirement. Professor Sorabji also mentioned the release of his forthcoming book on Cornelia entitled, Opening Doors: The Untold Story of Cornelia Sorabji Reformer, Lawyer and Champion of Women's Rights in India, which is going to be released soon in India.