Menaka Guruswamy, the first Indian woman Rhodes scholar to have her oil portrait displayed at Rhodes House, Oxford University, believes women lawyers must persevere. The portrait was unveiled on September 16 as part of the ‘40 Years of Rhodes Women’ event organised by the Rhodes Trust.
Rhodes House is named after Cecil Rhodes who established the Rhodes scholarship in 1902. The scholarship was restricted to men till 1977.
Speaking to DH from New York on Wednesday, Menaka, an alumna of the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru, said, “It is a matter of concern that there is only one woman judge in the Supreme Court and very few women senior counsel. It is a hard profession and there is, obviously, a systemic issue. But the most important thing is that you have to keep persevering.”
Menaka is a well-known human rights lawyer, and has defended a provision of the Right to Education Act mandating free education for underprivileged children in private schools.
She was also one of the lawyers who represented Naz Foundation in its fight against Section 377 in the Indian Penal Code. The section criminalises consensual same-sex relations. In her acceptance speech, Menaka spoke about going to Oxford in 1998 feeling she did not belong.
“As I walked through the halls of Oxford and this house, I was struck by how no one in the paintings that graced their walls looked like me, or really anyone of my fellow Rhodes Scholars from India, or most of the scholars from African countries or really many of my fellow scholars from the rest of the world. And the dissimilarities I am referring to are not really hair styles – if you know what I mean. The message overall seemed to be: you’re here, but you really don’t belong,” she said.
Menaka graduated from NLSIU as a gold medalist before she went on to pursue Bachelor of Civil Law at Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar.
Currently, Menaka teaches at Columbia Law School, New York, where she is B.R Ambedkar Research Scholar. She is also working on a book on South Asian constitutionalism.
