Scholarships at Oxford

"Sarosh Zaiwalla, senior partner at Zaiwalla and Company, Solicitors, London has very generously supported a law scholarship at the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development (OICSD) at Somerville College. The scholarship is named in memory of his father Ratanshaw Bomanjee Zaiwalla,” it was reported in Oxford Law News (OLN), No. 21, 2017.

(Above) Sarosh (left) and Ratanshaw Zaiwalla

Ratanshaw "was probably one of the first Indians to qualify as an English solicitor because in those years many Indians used to qualify as barristers but not solicitors,” added OLN. He qualified in 1925 and, after working for one year in a firm called Warwick and Warren in London, went back to India and established Zaiwalla and Company Solicitors in Bombay that is now being run by his son Dinsoo. Ratanshaw’s other sons, Bomi, Dara and Khushroo, are in legal practice too.
The first recipient of the Zaiwalla Scholarship is Shreya Prakash, a graduate from the National Law School in Bangalore who is currently studying civil law at Somerville College, Oxford. In these times of globalization, Sarosh hoped Prakash will become "one of India’s legal stars representing it with pride on the international arena.”
Over the years Sarosh Zaiwalla’s team of experts have handled cases for Indian and international clients including the Government of the People’s Republic of China, the office of the ruler of Dubai as also the Government of the Russian Federation. They are currently representing Iran’s Bank Mellat in the four billion USD (Rs 260 billion) damages claim against the UK Government in the UK Supreme Court.
When Sarosh founded Zaiwalla and Company in London in 1982, it was "the first English solicitors firm in the square mile (the commercial city in London is within a square mile, so a professional’s success is determined through his place of practice — whether within or beyond the square mile) started by a solicitor born and bred in India. At the time, it was revolutionary,” noted a press release. Zaiwalla and Company is reputed for being in the forefront of handling major cases from India and winning for the Indian Government its first case in the House of Lords concerning a shipping vessel called La Pintada, that helped save over £ 50 million (Rs 4,300 million) in foreign exchange.

Yet another Parsi to be commemorated at Oxford is Cornelia Sorabji, the first Indian woman admitted to Oxford and the first woman to practice law in India. On her 150th birth anniversary on November 15, 2016, the Faculty of Law and Somerville College created scholarships for outstanding Indian graduate students in law, made possible through the generosity of alumni and friends of Somerville, as mentioned in OLN. The Cornelia Sorabji Law Programme at the OICSD provides a thriving postgraduate and postdoctoral opportunity for talented Indian graduate students who could not otherwise afford to study at Oxford but seek to avail of the exposure to lead change on their return to India.

After graduating from Somerville with a degree in jurisprudence in 1892, Sorabji returned to India to work on behalf of women living in purdah and later became a distinguished member of Lincoln’s Inn. She was able to study at Oxford thanks to the help of subscriptions raised by progressive Indian and British men and women, added OLN.