When a TVM legal luminary became a pathbreaker for Indian women

In March 1930, a small wired despatch was printed in several newspapers in the US and Canada mentioning a Trivandrum-born lawyer by the name of Anna Chandy.

The San Francisco Chronicle, which featured her in its ‘People and Personality’ page, went to the extent of calling her “India’s First ‘Portia.’” This was a reference to the protagonist in William Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice,’ where Portia dresses as a lawyer by the name of Balthazar and saves the life of her beloved’s friend.

“Mrs. Anna Chandy, M.A., B.L., is the first practising lawyer in the Malayali community, which numbers 40,000,000 inhabitants,” the wired copy said.

While Chandy became a sensation abroad in 1930, this was just the beginning of a path where she would achieve a kind of success unimaginable in the male-dominated society of that time.

Born in 1905 into a Syrian Christian family, she enrolled for a post-graduate degree in law at the Government Law College and graduated with distinction in 1926.

By the time Chandy was called to the bar in 1929, she was already publishing a magazine named Shrimati, which focused on the upliftment of women. “This was the first women’s magazine in the Malayalam language,” the Government College for Women in Trivandrum said on its website. The magazine’s focus was on women’s rights and had articles on misogyny and the inequalities that women were subject to in India at that time.

She made her first High Court appearance in October 1930, where she argued an appeal for a man who had been convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour for culpable homicide, not amounting to murder. “Her appeal was dismissed but the judges paid a high tribute to her skill as an advocate, her oratory and powers of presenting a case and her clear, luminous analysis of the evidence,” the Straits Times said in November 1930.

Chandy briefly entered politics in the early 1930s successfully contesting elections in the legislative assembly of the Travancore state, serving for two years.

It was, however, in 1937 that Chandy entered the history books, when at the age of 32 she became the first woman judge in India. She was appointed as a “senior district munsiff” (as a judge was called then) in Travancore. A Reuters report from 1937 labelled it “an instance of the increasing part taken by women in the public life of the country.” For this, due credit must be given to Dewan CP Ramaswami Iyer, who was instrumental in Chandy getting this appointment.

She continued to grow professionally after India attained independence and Travancore acceded to the Indian Union. A year after the country became independent, Chandy became a district judge.

In 1959, Chandy once again made history when she was appointed to the Kerala High Court, becoming the first woman in India to occupy such a position. Such was the jubilation at her appointment in Kerala at that time that a grand reception was organised in Chandy’s honour by 15 women’s organisations in Ernakulam.

She published an autobiography in 1973 titled ‘Atmakatha,’ which provides readers a glimpse into her life and mind. It has been translated in parts and published on the ‘Swatantrayvaadini’ website by the brilliant feminist historian and social science researcher J Devika.

“Anna Chandy smashes all stereotypes about feminists in it [the autobiography],” Devika wrote on the website. “She comes across as a cheerful, active, mischievous, quick-witted, sharp-minded, articulate, happy-go-lucky woman who would have been quite content with a life of domesticity swaddled in a tender and intensely loving relationship with her man.”

In the autobiography, Chandy praised the Communist government led by EMS Namboodirippad for taking the bold step of appointing a woman as a high court judge.

The autobiography is full of anecdotes of her life as a judge and as a woman, and also of how colonialism impacted the way justice was served in a newly independent India. For instance, Chandy mentioned how the courts in Malabar kept a practice where witness statements were made in Malayalam and then translated to English for the benefit of British judges (before independence). She was worried about how minor mistakes in translation could impact cases, especially criminal ones, so she decided to record the statements in the original carefully.

Chandy retired in 1967 and later became a member of the Law Commission of India. She passed away in 1996, aged 91.

She was a luminary in every sense of the word and clearly set the path for women to enter the judiciary in India. Of course, there is still a major gender gap when it comes to women in India’s judiciary, with the percentage of women judges in the high courts being around 14 per cent, while it is less than 10 per cent in the Supreme Court.

Chandy remains an inspiration for many women who aspire to be judges. Earlier this year, the Chief Justice of India BR Gavai dedicated a book corner in the Kerala Judicial Academy to the country’s first woman judge, a small yet meaningful tribute.