Maria Hertogh


Maria Huberdina Hertogh, also known as Bertha Hertogh, 'Nadra binte Ma'arof, Nadra Adabi or simply Natrah', was a Dutch woman of Eurasian descent and Malay upbringing. She is notable for being at the centre of the Maria Hertogh riots when she was a young girl.
She was born to Dutch Roman Catholic parents in Java. During World War II, her parents were imprisoned by the Japanese and she was given to a Malay Muslim, Che Aminah binte Mohamed, and raised as a Muslim under the name Nadra. After the war, Maria’s biological parents sought to reclaim her and a custody battle ensued between the Hertoghs and Che Aminah.
The British colonial court in Singapore ruled in favor of the Dutch parents in 1950, ordering that Maria be returned to them. The court's decision was seen as an insult to Islam, since Maria was taken from a Muslim home and forced to leave her faith. A protest by outraged Muslims escalated when images of her were published showing her kneeling before a statue of the Virgin Mary and Saint Blaise, leading to riots that took place between 11 and 13 December 1950 in Singapore. 18 people were killed and 173 injured; many properties were also damaged.

Birth and baptism

Huberdina Maria Hertogh was born on 24 March 1937 to a Dutch Catholic family living in Cimahi, near Bandung, Java, then a part of the Dutch East Indies.
Her biological father, Adrianus Petrus Hertogh, came to Java in the 1920s as a sergeant in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army. In the early 1930s, he married Adeline Hunter, a Eurasian of Scottish-Javanese descent brought up in Java. Maria was baptised in the Roman Catholic Church of Saint Ignatius at Tjimahi on 10 April by a Catholic priest.

Early life

At the outbreak of World War II, Adrianus Hertogh, a sergeant in the Dutch Army, was captured by the Imperial Japanese Army and sent to a POW camp in Japan, where he was kept until 1945. Meanwhile, Adeline Hertogh stayed with her mother, Nor Louise, and her five children, among whom Maria was the third and youngest daughter. On 29 December 1942, Adeline gave birth to her sixth child, a boy. Three days later, Maria went to stay with Che Aminah binte Mohammad, a 42-year-old Malay woman from Kemaman, Terengganu, Malaya who was a close friend of Nor Louise.

Adeline Hertogh's version of events

According to Adeline Hertogh, in testimony 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, Hertogh borrowed a bicycle on 6 January and set out to retrieve her. She claimed that she was stopped by a Japanese sentry on the outskirts of Bandung as she did not possess a pass and was therefore 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. 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. However, Hertogh did not see Maria throughout her internment. After her release, she could not find either Maria nor Aminah.

Life with Aminah

Upon arriving with Aminah, Maria 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, where Aminah worked for the Japanese military police as an interpreter until the end of the war.
Aminah moved back to her hometown of Kampung Banggol in Kemaman, Terengganu. By then Maria was the same as any other Malay Muslim girl of her age: she spoke only Malay, wore Malay clothes, and practiced her religion devoutly.
Maria had an adoptive elder sister of Japanese descent, Kamariah Mohd Dahan, whom Aminah had adopted in Tokyo when she lived there with her husband.

Custody battle

In 1945, with the end of World War II, Sergeant Hertogh was released and returned to Java and reunited with his wife. The couple stated that they inquired about Maria, but could find neither her nor Aminah. They returned to the Netherlands after requesting the Dutch authorities in Java and Singapore to search for the child. Investigations were then made by the Red Cross Society, the Royal Netherlands Army, the Indonesian Repatriation Service, and local police. Finally, in September 1949, Aminah and Maria were traced to the kampung in which they were living.
Negotiations were opened to retrieve Maria in early 1950. The Dutch Consulate offered $500 to make up for Aminah's expenses in bringing up the girl for eight years. Aminah rejected the offer. Attempts were then made to persuade Aminah to travel with Maria to Singapore in April to discuss the issue with the Dutch Consul-General; Aminah again refused. The Consulate then applied to the High Court of Singapore on 22 April for Maria to be delivered into the custody of the Social Welfare Department, pending further order. The Chief Justice heard the request the same day and approved the application ex parte. The next day, an officer from the department served the order to take Maria from Aminah's custody, and Maria was then placed in the Girls' Home at York Hill.
From this point on, Maria made it clear that she wanted to stay with Aminah and did not wish to be returned to her natal parents. Aminah contended that Adeline had given Maria over to her willingly, and this was supported by the testimony of Soewaldi Hunter, Adeline's elder brother, who bore witness to the adoption. However, after a 15-minute hearing on 19 May, the High Court ruled that the custody of Maria be granted to the Hertoghs.
As Aminah and Maria exited the court via the back door, 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 the convent for temporary safekeeping.
Maria stayed at the convent 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 natal father. Both Aminah and Maria were overjoyed.

Controversial marriage

On 1 August 1950, Maria was married by way of a nikah gantung to 21-year-old Mansoor Adabi, a Kelantan-born teacher-in-training at the Bukit Panjang Government School. The marriage was later speculated to have been a manoeuvre by Aminah to prevent further retrieval attempts by the Hertoghs; Maria returned to live with Aminah after the wedding night, and the marriage was never consummated. Because the marriage had been solemnised in Singapore, which was at that time under British rule, British law controlled the validity of the marriage rather than Malayan law.
The first challenges on the marriage's validity came from within the Muslim community. On 10 August, a Muslim leader wrote to The Straits Times, pointing out that although Islamic law permits the marriage of girls starting after puberty, 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 majority of the Muslim population, albeit in a more antagonistic mood against the Dutch and Europeans at large.

Second appeal

Meanwhile, the Hertoghs had not given up legal pursuit to retrieve Maria. Only a day after the marriage, Aminah received the Hertoghs' representative lawyers from Kuala Lumpur. The lawyers delivered a letter demanding Maria's return 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 proceeded between 20 and 24 November. For four months, the matter hung in suspense. During this time, in order to avoid public scrutiny, Maria rarely left her residence in the house of M.A. Majid, then-president of the Muslim Welfare Association and Adabi's foster father. Nevertheless, media coverage on the incident had grown to a global scale. Letters from Muslim organisations 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 Maria's native Indonesia and as far as Saudi Arabia.
The hearing finally opened, and Maria's natal mother, Adeline Hertogh travelled down to Singapore to attend. The judge, Justice Brown, delivered the verdict in the case entitled Re M. H. Hertogh, an Infant: Hertogh v. Amina binte Mohamed and Others two weeks later. The marriage, instead of resolving the dispute, had instead complicated it. His judgment stated inter alia:
  1. That "after a most careful consideration of all the evidence which bears upon this marriage, the age of the child, the opportunities which she had of knowing Mansoor, and the date of the marriage in relation to the date of the Court of Appeal decision, I am compelled to the conclusion that this purported marriage was a manoeuvre designed to prejudice these proceedings, which is discreditable to all concerned. In saying that, I wish to make it clear that I am satisfied that the child was neither forced nor tricked into it."
  2. That "following the rule in Sottomayor v. De Barros , the validity of a marriage celebrated in Singapore between persons of whom the one has a Singapore, and the other a foreign, domicile is not affected by any incapacity which, though existing under the law of such foreign domicile, does not exist under the law of Singapore."
  3. That nevertheless "Maria's incapacity under the law of her, admittedly Holland, to contract the marriage, since she was under age, existed also under the law of Singapore."
  4. That "since her father had not waived or by his conduct abrogated his legal right to control the religion of his child and had not consented to her becoming a Muslim, whatever the child may say and whatever ceremonies and teaching she may have undergone, she is not in the eyes of this court a Muslim."
  5. That "therefore the purported marriage was void."
Having over-ruled 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.