Robert Cornelius was born on 8 May 1903, in Agra, United Provinces of the British Indian Empire, to a Christian Anglo-Indian Urdu-speaking family. He came from a well established family of Anglo-Indian ancestry with Luso-Indian roots on his maternal side, and his parents Professor I.J. Cornelius and Tara D' Rozario were amongst a few of the notable figures of the Roman Catholic Anglo-Indian minority community of India. His grandfather, Michael D'Rozario was Deputy-Range Officer-Forests, Central India. His father was a professor of mathematics at Holkar college. He was a close friend of lawyer Ibrahim Ismail Chundrigar. Cornelius was admitted at the Allahabad University after passing the university entrance exam in 1920. After admitting at the law school of the Allahabad University, Cornelius gained his BS in mathematics and LLB in civil law, with writing a comprehensive thesis on history of religious law in 1924. Cornelius joined the law faculty of the university, working there as a research associate, and won the government scholarship to pursue further education abroad. The same year, Cornelius went to the United Kingdom for his higher education and was admitted at Cambridge University, attending the Selwyn College to study law. In 1926, Cornelius graduated with LLM in Law and Justice and submitted his fundamental thesis on Western law. After reluctantly returning to India, Cornelius took the entrance exam and was commissioned as an officer at the Indian Civil Service, joining the Department of Law of the Government of Punjab. Career in law He joined the Indian Civil Service in 1926. He served in Punjab, where he held the positions of Assistant Commissioner and District and Sessions Judge till 1943 when he joined Law Department of Government of Punjab as Legal Remembrancer. In 1946 Mr. Cornelius was elevated to the Bench of Lahore High Court. Pakistan Movement Cornelius was one of the notable Christian figures in the Pakistan Movement, closely collaborating with Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Cornelius was an active activist for the Pakistan Movement and one of the outspoken speakers of the movement, working to rally support for the Pakistan Movement. Unlike the opposition to the division of India, led by renowned Muslim leader Abul Kalam Azad, Cornelius felt that the creation of the Muslim homeland in India was one key solution to the ill-treatment of Muslims by the British government and among the leaders of the Congress Party of India, while at same time he revived