Maria Hertogh and Che Aminah binte Mohamed
The beginning
Maria Hertogh was born on March 24, 1937 to a Dutch Catholic family living in Tjimahi, near Bandung, Java, then a part of the Dutch East Indies. Her father, Adrianus Petrus Hertogh, came to Java in the 1920s as a sergeant in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army. He married Adeline Hunter, a Eurasian of Scottish descent brought up in Java, in the early 1930s. Little Maria was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church of Saint Ignatius at Tjimahi on April 10 by a Catholic priest.
When World War II broke out, Sergeant Hertogh was captured by the Imperial Japanese Army and sent to a POW holding facility in Japan, where he was kept till 1945. Meanwhile, Adeline Hertogh stayed with her mother, Nor Louise, and her five children, among whom Maria was the third and youngest daughter. On December 29, 1942, Mrs. Hertogh gave birth to her sixth child, a boy. Three days later, Maria went to stay with Aminah binte Mohammad, a 42-year-old Javanese woman and a close friend of Nor Louise. This controversial transfer of custody, reversed in a Singaporean court eight years later, was the centre and opening episode of the tragic riots that were to come.
Adoption or a short stay?
Adeline Hertogh's version
According to Adeline Hertogh, in the version given in evidence before the court at the hearing in November 1950, she was persuaded by her mother after the birth of her sixth child to allow Maria to go and stay with Aminah in Bandung for three or four days. Consequently, Aminah arrived on 1 January 1943 to fetch Maria. When the child was not returned, Mrs. Hertogh borrowed a bicycle on 6 January and set out to retrieve her daughter. She claimed that she was arrested by a Japanese sentry on the outskirts of Bandung as she did not possess a pass and was thereupon interned.
From her internment camp, she smuggled a letter to her mother, requesting for her children to be sent to her. This Nor Louise did, but Maria was not among them. So Mrs. Hertogh asked her mother to fetch Maria from Aminah. Her mother later wrote and told her that Aminah wanted to keep Maria for two more days, after which she herself would bring the child to the camp. This did not materialize and Mrs. Hertogh did not see Maria throughout her interment. After her release, she could find neither Maria nor Aminah.
Aminah binte Mohamed's version
The above version was rejected by Aminah binte Mohamed in her affidavits and sworn testimony to the High Court on several occasions. She claimed that Adeline Hertogh had given Maria to her for adoption in late 1942. She asserted that she, without offspring of her own, told Mrs. Hertogh then that she would regard Maria absolutely as her child, whom she would bring up in the Muslim faith. To this, according to Aminah, Mrs. Hertogh replied that she would be glad as she herself had been brought up as a Muslim.
Aminah also contested the truth of Adeline Hertogh's internment by the Japanese. She testified that she and Mrs. Hertogh continued to visit each other frequently after the adoption until the latter left for Surabaya to look for a job "about the end of 1943 or the beginning of 1944." Thereafter the two never saw each other again till 1950.
A new home and a new religion
Anyhow, Maria Hertogh received her Muslim circumcision in late 1943, whereupon she was given the name Nadra binte Ma'arof. For unknown reasons her new family moved to Jakarta for a period before moving back to Bandung again, where Aminah worked for the Japanese military police as an interpreter until the end of the war.
Then, in 1947, fearing harm upon the family during the Indonesian National Revolution as Maria was a "Putih", or a "White Child", Aminah moved via Singapore to her hometown in Kemaman, in the state of Terengganu, then Malaya. By then Maria was completely the same as any other Malay Muslim girl of her age: she spoke only Malay, wore Malay clothes and practised her religion devoutly.
To court
In 1945, with the end of World War II, Sergeant Hertogh was released and returned to Java, where he reunited with his wife. The couple said that they enquired about Maria but could find neither their daughter nor Aminah. They then returned to the Netherlands after requesting the Dutch authorities in Java and Singapore to try to trace the child. Investigations were then made by the Red Cross Society, the Indonesian Repatriation Service, the Royal Netherlands Army and local police. Finally, in September 1949, Aminah and Maria were traced to the kampong they were living in.
Negotiations were opened to retrieve Maria in early 1950. The Dutch Consulate offered S$500 to make up for Aminah's expenses in bringing up the girl for eight years. Aminah rejected the offer and refused to give up her foster-daughter. Nonetheless, she was persuaded to travel with Maria to Singapore in April to discuss the issue with the Dutch Consul-General. However, Aminah's firm position could not be wavered and the Consulate eventually applied to the High Court on 22 April for Maria to be delivered into the custody of the Social Welfare Department pending further order. The Chief Justice heard it on the same day and approved the application ex parte.
The next day, an officer from the department served the order on Aminah and brought Maria away. After a routine medical examination at the Middle Road Hospital, she was admitted to the Girls Homecraft Centre at York Hill. From this point onwards, Maria had made it clear that she wanted to stay with Aminah and did not wish to be returned to her natural parents. However, the High Court ruled on 17 May after a short hearing of about 15 minutes that the custody of Maria be entitled to the Hertoghs.
As Aminah and Maria exited the court via the backdoor, a car from the Consulate was waiting to take Maria away. Maria refused to enter the car and clung on to Aminah, both shouting in Malay that they would kill themselves rather than be separated. A large crowd quickly formed around the commotion. It was only after much persuasion that Aminah agreed to enter the car together with Maria and pay a visit to her lawyer, who explained that Maria had to be given up until an appeal was made. The duo then parted in tears, with Maria returned to York Hill for temporary safekeeping.
At York Hill Maria stayed for two more months, under a further order from the Chief Justice pending appeal, which was filed on 28 July. The verdict was an overruling of the earlier decision. Aside from the ex parte order to hand Maria to the Social Welfare Department, the Appellate Court found ambiguity in the Dutch Consul-General's representation of Maria's natural father, a rather minor and technical detail but apparently significant enough under the circumstance. Both Aminah and Maria were overjoyed.
Controversial marriage
On 1 August 1950, merely four days after winning the appeal, the events took a dramatic and unexpected turn. Maria was married to 22-year-old Mansoor Adabi, a Malayan-born who was then a teacher-in-training at the Bukit Panjang Government School, in a Muslim ritual. The marriage could be a manoeuvre by Aminah to prevent further attempts by the Hertoghs to get back their daughter, as Maria returned to live with Aminah after the wedding night and the new couple never consummated their marriage. Whether such speculation was true was unimportant in the subsequent development of events, in which Maria, a willing bride nonetheless, became the central figure.
The first challenges on the appropriateness of the marriage actually came from the Muslim community. On 10 August, a Muslim leader wrote to The Straits Times pointing out that although the Islamic law permits the marriage of girls after puberty (which Maria had reached a year earlier), there were Muslim countries such as Egypt that legislated for a minimum marriage age of 16. He added, however, that it would not be in the interest of "the friendly understanding... between Christians and Muslims" to object to the marriage since it had already taken place. The latter view was held by the Muslim population at large, albeit in a more antagonistic mood against the Dutch and Europeans at large.
To court, again
Meanwhile, the Hertoghs had not given up legal pursuit to retrieve their daughter. Only a day after the marriage, Aminah received the Hertoghs' representative lawyers from Kuala Lumpur. The lawyers delivered a letter demanding the return of Maria by 10 August, failing which legal action would be taken. Believing that the marriage settled the matter, Aminah and Mansoor both ignored the deadline. The Hertoghs did not. On 26 August, an originating summons was taken out, under the Guardianship of Infants Ordinance, by the Hertoghs as plaintiffs against Aminah, Maria and Mansoor, who were all made defendants.
The hearing did not begin till 20 November. For four months the matter hung in suspense. During this time, Maria rarely left her residence in the house of M.A. Majid, then president of the Muslim Welfare Association, because in her own words, she attracted "too much attention". Nevertheless, media coverage on the incident had grown to a global scale. Letters from Muslim organizations in Pakistan promising financial and other help arrived, some going so far as to declare any further move by the Dutch Government to separate the couple as "an open challenge to the Muslim world". Pledges of aid also came from Indonesia and as far as Saudi Arabia.
The hearing finally opened, and Maria's natural mother, Adeline Hertogh travelled down to Singapore to attend. The judge, Justice Brown, delivered the verdict two weeks later. The marriage, instead of resolving the dispute, had instead complicated it. Justice Brown had two issues on his hand, namely the legality of the marriage and the custody of Maria. He held that the marriage was invalid because:
1. Maria's country of domicile was, by law that of her natural father, i.e. the Netherlands. Under the Dutch laws, the minimum age of marriage for girls was 16. The English law applicable in Singapore recognized the marriage laws of the subject's country of domicile.
2. An exception to the above point could not be established because neither Mansoor, born in Kelantan, could be proved to be domiciled in Singapore nor Maria be considered a Muslim by law[3]. During her minority, Maria's natural father, who was a Christian, had the legal right to control her religion. He had testified that he would never consent to her conversion to Islam.
Having overruled the purported marriage, Justice Brown went on to deal with what he described as the "most difficult" question of custody. He noted that his duty to the law required him "to have regard primarily to the welfare of the infant". He believed this meant that he not only had to consider the current wishes of Maria, but also her future well-being. He stated:
It is natural that she should now wish to remain in Malaya among people whom she knows. But who can say that she will have the same views some years hence after her outlooks has been enlarged, and her contacts extended, in the life of the family to which she belongs?"
He also noted that whatever the details of the contested initiation of the custody at the end of 1942 might be, Adrianus Hertogh had not been part of it and had not abrogated his parental rights. He therefore awarded the custody of Maria to the Hertoghs and ordered that she should be handed over to her mother with immediate effect.
Stay at the convent
When policewomen came to take Maria away, she wept and clung to Aminah and Mansoor. Aminah fainted on the spot and a doctor standing by had to attend to her. Mansoor advised Maria to concede for the time being and promised that he and others would carry on the legal fight. Thus Maria allowed herself to be brought away into a car. Outside, the police, including a Gurkha contingent, held back a crowd of several hundred.
The car delivered Maria to the Roman Catholic Convent of the Good Shepherd in Thomson Road. Mrs. Hertogh stayed at another address for a few days, from where she visited Maria daily, before moving in to the convent herself. According to an official of the Netherlands Consulate-General, such arrange was because of "greater convenience" while the stay of execution pending appeal was in effect. But it proved to be the falsest step, the spark that lit the fuse of the subsequent riots.
First and foremost, the press was not barred from entering the convent grounds. Nor were they restricted in any way in their approach to the incident, which had been nothing shy of sensational. On 5 December, the Singapore Standard published on its front page a photograph of Maria standing holding hands with the Reverend Mother. There were several more pictures on page 2, under the headline: Bertha knelt before Virgin Mary Statue. The Malay press retorted. The Utusan Melayu published on 7 December three photographs of Maria weeping and being comforted by a nun, as well as articles about Maria's "lonely and miserable" life in the convent.
These pictures, whether presenting Maria as happy or sad, mostly showed Maria surrounded by symbols of Christian faith. The Muslims, who looked upon Maria as one of their own, were deeply offended by such pictures, not to mention the sensational reports, some of which explicitly labelled the case as a religious issue between Islam and Christianity.
On 9 December, an organization calling itself the Nadra Action Committee was formally constituted under the leadership of Karim Ghani, a Muslim political activist from Rangoon. This extreme organization solicited support among local Muslims by distributing free copies of its newspaper, the Dawn (not the Dawn, an English paper published in Pakistan). Karim Ghani had also made an open speech at the Sultan Mosque on 8 December in which he mentioned jihad as a final resort.
In the light of these potent signs of a great disturbance, the Criminal Investigation Department sent a memo to the Colonial Secretary suggesting moving Maria back to York Hill to avoid further inciting Muslim anger. The Secretary did not agree on grounds that he had received no such representations from Muslim leaders, nor did he have the authority to remove Maria without further court orders - weak excuses since Maria could be relocated with her mother's consent. Nonetheless, it could never be said if moving Maria out of the convent at such a late stage could have averted the riots.
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