Colonialism, Violence and Muslims in Southeast Asia

The Maria Hertogh Controversy and its Aftermath

Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781134011582
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

This book deals with the genesis, outbreak and far-reaching effects of a legal controversy and the resulting outbreak of mass violence, which determined the course of British colonial rule after post World War Two in Singapore and Malaya. Based on extensive archival sources, it examines the custody hearing of Maria Hertogh, a case which exposed tensions between Malay and Singaporean Muslims and British colonial society. Investigating the wide-ranging effects and crises faced in the aftermath of the riots, the analysis focuses in particular on the restoration of peace and rebuilding of society.

The author provides a nuanced and sophisticated understanding of British management of riots and mass violence in Southeast Asia. By exploring the responses by non-British communities in Singapore, Malaya and the wider Muslim world to the Maria Hertogh controversy, he shows that British strategies and policies can be better understood through the themes of resistance and collaboration. Furthermore, the book argues that British enactment of laws pertaining to the management of religions in the post-war period had dispossessed religious minorities of their perceived religious rights. As a result, outbreaks of mass violence and continual grievances ensued in the final years of British colonial rule in Southeast Asia - and these tensions still pertain in the present.

This book will be of interest to scholars and students of law and society, history, Imperial History and Asian Studies, and to anyone studying minorities, and violence and recovery.

1
Remembering violence

11 December 1950

A British serviceman named John W. Davies was travelling on a bus through the streets of colonial Singapore with his wife and eight-year-old daughter. What seemed to be a calm evening was suddenly disrupted by a confrontation with rioters who were infuriated by a British court’s decision that a Dutch-Muslim girl named Maria Hertogh was to be restored to her Christian parents. Europeans and Eurasians in the colony were thus perceived as enemies of Islam. Davies was dragged out of the bus and assaulted by the roadside. In desperation, he jumped into a drain in a futile attempt to hide, but the rioters overcame him and subjected him to a vicious attack. While the serviceman’s wife and daughter were left unscathed in the course of mass violence that spread rapidly across the island, Davies was left mortally wounded. His death, along with the deaths of many others who were either victims or perpetrators of violence, marked a new epoch in the history of one of Britain’s most important colonies.

Since that fateful incident, what has come to be known as the Maria Hertogh controversy has occupied a vital place within the Singapore government’s depiction of the turbulent colonial past, so much so that it has often been singled out and invoked during periods of conflict and social effervescence. In November 1986, for example, after protests launched by Malay Muslims in both Singapore and Malaysia in response to Israeli President Chaim Herzog’s visit to the island-state, Singapore’s Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, declared that such protests had the dangerous potential of provoking riots similar to those in 1950 when all ‘hell broke loose’.¹ Then, as it is at present, the riots still function as a metaphor for Singaporeans that religion should never be enmeshed with secular and radical politics. It provides a potent historical lesson that excessive ideological fervour, missionary zeal and moral assertiveness are undesirable and have no place within a progressive society. Constant references to the riots have also served as a subtle warning to the press that any attempts to incite racial and religious tensions will result in the cessation of publication and criminal prosecution. Presented in the mainstream media and school textbooks in such a way as to validate the postcolonial nation-state and its ideological ethos, the Maria Hertogh controversy has become something of a ‘moral panic’ that defines the normative boundaries of society.²

Distinct but contrasting images come to mind as one considers Tengku Abdul Rahman’s recollections of the riots. For the first prime minister of Malaysia, the Maria Hertogh controversy marked the beginnings of his struggle for the country’s independence from the British Empire. It was a moment of solidarity in defence of Islam, yet at the same time, the riots were an aberration because the use of violence in the name of religion had no true historical precedent in colonial Malaya. Recounting his rage towards those who had filed a lawsuit to gain custody of a Muslim girl, the Tengku maintained that Maria Hertogh had been deprived of the care of her foster mother and was ‘forcibly taken to the convent and converted to Christianity’. Nonetheless, he admitted, ‘I had gained much popular support for myself and the party I led as a result of this case.’³ It is, therefore, paradoxical that memories of the riots and their ramifications have outlived the Tengku’s popularity. In fact, there arose a renewed interest in the popular media to re-enact what is seen as a landmark event in the country’s political history. Newspapers, magazine articles and documentaries have portrayed the riots as artefacts of nation-building, challenges to social cohesion and an imperialist plot on the part of the British and the Dutch against Islam. Oblique allusions to the riots were also made during the course of the recent debates surrounding the Lina Joy apostasy case, with the dominant line of reasoning among Muslim bloggers, advocates and legal experts being that the Maria Hertogh controversy serves as a moral warning that no attempt to lead Muslims astray from their religion would be left unchallenged. Any failure on the part of the state to preserve the religious life and identity of Malays in Malaysia will lead to violence.⁴

With such a premium placed on the Maria Hertogh controversy in both Singapore and Malaysia and the emotions it has elicited, it is hardly accidental that a considerable body of historiographical literature has been devoted to the subject. Writers who were involved in, or witnesses of, the events that unfolded in Singapore in December 1950 attribute the riots to domestic problems, especially in the realm of the adoption of children, inter-ethnic marriages and the colonial state’s management of Muslims. Academic historians, in turn, have given more prominence to wider imperatives, such as the currents of Islamic resurgence and the anti-colonial movements that swept throughout Southeast Asia.⁵ Regardless of their varied interpretations, what binds all of these works together is the preoccupation with the causes and factors that led to the outbreak of the Maria Hertogh riots and their eventual suppression. Here, it would not be excessive to assert that almost all previous studies of riots, pogroms and disorders in Southeast Asia have been largely concerned with the ideological, structural, psychological, political, economic and social conditions that gave rise to instances of mass violence. To the extent that some discussion of the aftermath of mass violence has been made by a handful of scholars, such accounts have tended to be descriptive rather than analytic. There has been no comprehensive scrutiny of the variety of strategies that were employed by colonial states to deal with the various forms of resistance, the collaboration of local elites and the impact of these processes upon minorities. The traumas suffered by victims and the various efforts that were undertaken to thwart the recurrence of mass violence remain relatively understudied.⁶ Such limitations in the extant literature, the hollowness of state-sponsored histories and the persistence of public enchantment necessitate the employment of new data, original approaches and refined analyses to the study of the Maria Hertogh controversy. Through this, I seek to open up new spaces in the historiography of British colonialism, violence and Muslims in Southeast Asia.

More than offering a mere narrative of events, this book initiates a shift beyond the study of the causes of the riots towards a deeper examination of the wide-ranging effects and crises faced in the aftermath. The study of the aftermath of violent upheavals such as the Maria Hertogh riots is particularly important as it calls for a reassessment of the various institutions, organisations, ideologies, symbols and values that operate within a given colonial society. By broadening the analytical focus to encompass the ways in which the historical actors grappled with the restoration of peace and the rebuilding of a society that was torn asunder by mass violence, the historian is compelled to rethink the structures of colonial dominance and the extent of interdependency between the ruling elites and the subaltern masses, and between the coloniser and the colonised.⁷ This does not in any way imply that the causes and circumstances that led to the outbreak of riots and other forms of collective violence are to be summarily neglected. In what follows, I will provide fresh reinterpretations of the confluence of global forces and local dynamics which shaped British strategies, as well as the responses of the communities in Singapore and Malaya.

Second, in sharp contrast with previous studies and popular literature, which depict the riots as part of a master national narrative, this book will frame the Maria Hertogh controversy against the backdrop of British imperialism and decolonisation in Southeast Asia. It will explore the linkages between the British colonial administration in Singapore and the policy makers and officials in the Home Government and other colonies. To be sure, the British Empire functioned within a methodical framework in which the opinions and ideas of officials in the peripheries (the colonies) interacted with those of the metropole (the Home Government) before key decisions and policies were executed. To focus solely upon micro-politics in the colonies is to lose sight of the macro-politics that defined the modus operandi of the British imperial network in the post-war era. The British Empire, as a leading imperial historian has succinctly pointed out, ‘is best understood not as a territorial phenomenon but as the grand project for a global system’.⁸

As a corollary, I find it useful to develop, and yet also to problematise, Tony Ballantyne’s conception of the British Empire as ‘a complex web consisting of ‘horizontal’ filaments that run among various colonies in addition to ‘vertical’ connections between the metropole and individual colonies’.⁹ It will be demonstrated that both the horizontal filaments and the vertical connections of the British Empire proved to be vital in ensuring that there were swift reactions to the protests of the various parties who were concerned with the riots and the legal controversy. Paradoxically, in an age of decolonisation, the communication links and political networks established by the British also functioned as avenues of resistance and critique for politicians in newly independent countries, as well as anti-colonial activists and news agencies in the colonies and in Britain itself.

Figure 1.1 Maria Hertogh and Che Aminah

A more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of colonial management of riots and mass violence in Southeast Asia constitutes the third area that will be developed throughout this book. Historians writing on the subject of colonial policies in the post-Second World War period have often espoused the two-pronged approach that was adopted by the British in dealing with resistance movements, popular protests and insurgencies. Through the strategy of ‘concession’, the British sought to foster native leaders and organisations to aid in the realisation of the long-term aims of the colonial state. This strategy was accompanied by the use of brute force and coercive measures to obliterate the challenges posed by those who promoted violence and radicalism. Perceptive as it is, such widely held interpretations have led to the neglect of British usage of covert agencies which performed not only the roles of ‘concession’ and ‘coercion’, but also the ‘collection’ of vital information for the purposes of anticipating and repelling all forms of opposition to colonial rule.¹⁰ ‘Self-criticism’ was an equally important strategy to insulate the colonial administration from a continual loss of legitimacy and to justify its relevance and dominance upon colonised societies in the aftermath of mass violence, but it has also generally been left unexplored. Chapters 4 and 5 of this book will address such neglected frontiers.

No study of the Maria Hertogh controversy would be complete without a thorough discussion and analysis of the responses of the non-British communities. I contend that British strategies and policies can only be better understood by elucidating the themes of resistance and collaboration, particularly that of the Muslims in Singapore, Malaya and the wider Muslim world. The Nigerian Source: Terenjit Singh and Family scholar J. F. A. Ajayi sharply asserts that ‘although Europeans were generally masters of the colonial situation and had political sovereignty, cultural and economic dominance, they did not possess a monopoly of initiative during the colonial period.’¹¹ Building upon such observations, this book provides a new frame of reference that cuts against the grain of ‘Eurocentric’ and ‘nativist’ tendencies in Southeast Asian colonial historiography. While assigning primacy to the discourses and courses of action pursued by colonial rulers, I examine also the multifaceted impact of policies, the responses of the local communities and the dialogical exchanges between the rulers and the ruled.

More to the point, I will draw upon and propose new ways of analysing various forms of resistance that were employed by Southeast Asian communities in confronting colonial rule. The first form of resistance involves violent acts, such as riots and rebellions. This was followed by active participation within colonial administrative structures, such as Legislative Councils, political parties and other state-sponsored organisations. Petitions and other forms of discursive engagements fit into the next level of approach. Fourth, in applying the theories and concepts of James C. Scott, Donald Nonini demonstrates how silence and passivity towards colonial policies served as potent forms of ‘everyday resistance’ and ‘weapons of the weak’ for peasants in British Malaya.¹² To add to the above list, in Chapter 3, I will elaborate upon ‘strategic desertion’ as yet another form of resistance in situations where the above four approaches had proved futile. ‘Strategic desertion’ refers to a planned and conscious departure from the arena of contestation to a new site, beyond the colonial orbit of influence and control. Such a strategy was pursued with the intent of sustaining a form of resistance from without.

Above all, this study extends and refines the corpus of literature pertaining to minorities in Southeast Asia, particularly Muslim minorities under colonial rule. It has been argued that colonial regimes tended to view ‘ethnic and religious minorities as weak and vulnerable and in some instances established separate administrative areas and special laws or regulations to protect their interests’.¹³ Although applicable in the context of post-war Malaya, this assertion is inherently inadequate and requires further elaboration. I will exhibit the ways in which British enactment of laws pertaining to the management of religions in the postwar period were determined by European assumptions and attitudes towards gender, childhood and native legal systems. This had, in actuality, the reverse effect of dispossessing Muslims and other minorities of their perceived rights and resulted in the outbreak of mass violence and continual grievances in the years that ensued. Chapters 2 and 7 of this book delve into this issue in greater detail.

To put it succinctly, in the following pages, I shall develop the argument that the Maria Hertogh riots stemmed from the failure of the British to address four crucial factors which shaped the Singapore Muslim community’s attitudes towards the colonial regime: the influence of radical ideas, the effects of socioeconomic marginalisation, press sensationalisation surrounding the legal controversy and the ineffectiveness of the police force and other security agencies. The outbreak of the riots had a negative impact upon the image and role of the British colonial administration in Singapore, which jeopardised diplomatic ties between the British Empire, the Netherlands and the nations of the Muslim World. In response, the British utilised a symbiotic combination of proscription, surveillance, self-criticism, reconciliation and reform. Through these strategies, they sought to redeem their tarnished image, mitigate the negative effects of the riots, and anticipate similar outbreaks arising from racial and religious dissent. The politics, resistance, collaboration and ramifications upon minorities in Singapore arising from each of these five strategies will be brought to the fore.

Each of the book’s chapters is framed within an over-arching British strategy, and at the same time, the book provides a comprehensive account of the wide repertoires of responses from the non-British communities. The driving theme of Chapter 2 is the set of challenges faced by the British colonial administration in re-asserting their position in post-war Singapore following ...

Table of contents

• Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia
• Contents
• Figures
• Preface and acknowledgements
• Abbreviations and glossary
• 1 Remembering violence
• 2 The colonial setting and the outbreak of riots
• 3 Proscription
• 4 Surveillance
• 5 Self-criticism
• 6 Reconciliation
• 7 Reform
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1 Statement by members of the inter-religious organisation and other representatives of religious bodies, 22nd February, 1951
• Appendix 2 Dramatis personae
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index