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Disowning “Indianness”: Images of Indian Womanhood and the “English” Self of Cornelia Sorabji

This article takes its cue from Amit Chaudhuri's assertion that a substantial part of modern Indian literature revolves around the issue of disowning and recovering “Indianness.” Though the theme of recovering Indianness in modern Indian literature is well researched, little attention has been paid to explore the dynamics of disowning Indianness. Here, I seek to explore this process of disavowal by focusing on the autobiography of the first Indian woman to practice law, Cornelia Sorabji. India Calling, published when Sorabji was nearing the end of her illustrious career as a lawyer and as an author who interpreted “Indian woman” for a metropolitan audience, remains one of the most intriguing documents recording the anguished quest of an Indian to fashion herself as English. This article explores the various textual strategies through which this “English” self-fashioning is expressed and the concomitant disowning of Indianness articulated.