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- Title
Private Lives, Public Spheres: Contesting Child Marriage at the Age of Independence in British Malaya, 1950.
- Authors
Wu, Jialin Christina
- Abstract
In May 1950, a custody battle between a Malay-Muslim woman and a Dutch-Catholic family over thirteen-year-old Nadra/‘Bertha’ Maria Hertogh seized public attention. The dispute escalated into a colonial ‘scandal’ when news emerged of Maria’s discreet ‘Muslim child marriage’ to a twenty-two-year-old Malay schoolmaster while the custody matter was pending in Singapore. As events unfolded, public opinion grew increasingly critical of local marriage practices, child-care and imperial authority. These developments led members of Singapore’s Legislative Council to propose an Age of Marriage Bill, which stirred debates on the consequences of gender inequalities within marriages in Malaya. In December 1950, after a British judge invalidated the thirteen-year-old’s Muslim marriage and awarded her custody to her Dutch family, riots broke out in Singapore. Studies of the outbreak and aftermath of religious and ethnic violence have since eclipsed analyses of the public discussions engendered by the Bill. This article, however, refocuses attention upon these debates on gender and marital inequalities and examines them in parallel with the public reactions to Maria Hertogh’s case. It argues that these inter-communal debates in cosmopolitan colonial Singapore provided space for Malay’s diverse communities to work out the tensions they encountered at the age of political self-determination in Southeast Asia.
- Subjects
ASIA; MARRIAGE age; BRITISH colonies; MARRIAGE age (Islamic law); AGE of consent; MALAYS (Asian people); CUSTODY of children -- Lawsuits &; claims; HISTORY of Singapore -- 1945-1963; MALAYSIAN history; TWENTIETH century; HISTORY; RELIGION; MARRIAGE customs &; rites
- Publication
Gender & History, 2017, Vol 29, Issue 3, p658
- ISSN
0953-5233
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/1468-0424.12323