Loong Dien Min
In December 1950, Singapore was rocked by one of its worst riots, sparked by a court battle over custody of a young girl named Maria Hertogh. 18 people were killed, 173 injured. Damages in vehicles and personal property amounted to over 20,000 Straits dollars. While activist portrayals and competing newspaper coverages of Maria’s case has sensationalised its religious controversies, this perspective has undermined another crucial element of the case. It was about who had the power to decide what counted as legal marriage and parentage under colonial rule.
Maria Hertogh, born in 1937 to Dutch-Eurasian Catholic parents, was placed in the care of Che Aminah, a Malay-Muslim woman, during World War II. In 1949, Maria’s birth parents in the Netherlands sought to reclaim her through contacting Dutch authorities. After locating her in Terengganu, the Dutch Consul-General secured custody over her through Singapore’s High Court. At court, Aminah and Adeline Hertogh (Maria’s biological mother) argued over whether Aminah’s guardianship of Maria was a permanent adoption or a temporary transfer. Although initially the judge ruled in favour of the Hertoghs, Aminah appealed with the help of the Muslim Women’s Association on account of procedural flaws. The appeal succeeded, and Maria’s return to Aminah in July 1950 was celebrated by many in the Malay-Muslim community.
Three days after, 13-year-old Maria entered into a nikah gantung (truncated marriage) with 21-year-old Mansoor Adabi from Kelantan. Though common among Malay-Muslims and legitimate under Islamic law, her biological parents soon challenged the marriage in the same court. In December, the judge ruled their marriage invalid under Dutch law, citing Maria’s young age and Catholic birth. Custody was returned to her biological parents, who placed her in a Catholic convent in preparation for her return to the Netherlands.
To many Muslims, the court’s decision was a rejection of their faith. They saw Maria as a Muslim girl with a valid Islamic marriage, not a Catholic Dutch child. Tensions rose as newspapers sensationalised her ambiguous Muslim identity. Peaceful protests outside the Supreme Court on 11 December 1950 turned violent after a clash with a European officer. Rioters targeted Europeans, Eurasians, and Malays seen as siding with colonial rule. The military was even called in. When the riots died down on 13 December, the damage was done, and deep divisions within society were laid bare.
Public attention over the the custody case was not merely around Maria’s religious affiliation, but also her status as a ‘child’. Public writers from Kedah, Johor, Pahang chimed in, questioning her alleged maturity and her intellectual and legal capacity to marry in The Straits Times. Collectively, public debate in Malaya revolved around whether her consent to the nikah was out of her own free will, or whether it was a strategy to prevent her from being sent back to her Dutch parents.
Yet, the case was published not only in local English newspapers, but also in the Dutch and American presses. The news portrayed Maria as either someone older than her biological age or an innocent girl forced out of a pure, happy childhood. As such, scrutinising her welfare as a child also interrogated the legitimacy of Aminah as Maria’s guardian.
After the riots, the case became a platform for both governmental and non-governmental groups to push their political aims. Singapore’s male-dominated Muslim Advisory Board used it to highlight the common occurrence of child marriages between Malay men and Chinese girls in the colony. In light of intensifying public debates, John Laycock of the Singapore Progressive Part proposed an Ordinance to nullify marriages between persons under 16 in September 1950. However, he specified that the Bill would not apply to Muslim marriages.
The case and subsequently, the Bill, was also seized upon by feminist activists, and especially Muslim women, to fight for better legal rights in marital affairs. Che Zahara, President of the Malay Women’s Welfare Association (MWWA), was expressly in support of the Bill, along with other Malay women. While the Muslim Advisory Board opposed the Bill strongly with the view that only Muslims should have the right to comment on Muslim marriages, the Bishops of the Anglican, Methodist and Catholic churches opposed it on the basis of respecting the social customs of the multireligious population.
Through Maria’s marriage and custody case, a transnational public spanning from present-day Indonesia, Singapore, West Malaysia to the Netherlands became invested in discussing personal laws and marriages. The Dutch press and Dutch government pressured their British counterparts to act, and even shamed the British officials for failing to prevent escalation. The riots also revealed the deep disconnect between colonial officials and religious sensitivities, especially around questions of marriage, custody and a young girl’s agency. The colonial regime had tried to decide who Maria really was. But in doing so, it showed just how little it understood the communities it ruled.
The shape of the debate around child marriages in present-day Malaysia is not new, as the 1950 Hertogh controversy shows. Revealing the fragility of interethnic and interreligious relations in Malaya, the case was shaped by Dutch and British imperial pressures and international attention it has garnered during its time. This attention revolves around Maria’s status as a child. This nation’s ethical order around child marriage is inseparable from girls’ and women’s rights concerning marriage in the past—itself legally fragmented by religion, race, and anti-colonial anxieties.
Further Readings
- Syed Muhammad Khairudin Aljunied. Colonialism, Violence and Muslims in Southeast Asia: The Maria Hertogh Controversy and its Aftermath. London: Routledge, 2009.
- Tom Eames Hughes. Tangled Worlds: The Story of Maria Hertogh. Singapore: ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute, 1980.