The Maria Hertogh riots or Nadrah riots, which started on 11 December 1950 in Singapore, consisted of outraged Muslims who resented the court decision to give custody of Maria Hertogh (or Bertha Hertogh), then 13, to her biological Dutch Catholic parents after she had been raised as a Muslim under the care of Aminah binte Mohamed, whom she regarded as her mother. The riots lasted till noon on 13 December, with 18 killed, 173 injured and many properties damaged—the worst incident of its kind ever witnessed in Singapore.

The main cause of the riot was the disputed custody of Maria that had received widespread press coverage. Many Muslims living in Malaya and Indonesia believed in the legitimacy of the adoption of Maria and a later short-lived marriage to Mansoor Adabi, two major points of contest in the court proceeding to determine the custody of Maria. They thus lent their support, financial and moral, to organizations that fought to keep Maria in Malaya. But some, such as the Malayan nationalists, seized the incident as an opportunity to further weaken the colonial government's position in the region. The insensitivity of the colonial government towards Muslim sentiments and the involvement of radical elements eventually culminated in the tragedy.

Beginning

Maria Hertogh was born on 24 March 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, in the early 1930s. 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 , 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 29 December 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.

Different versions of testimonial.

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 and was thereupon interned.

From her internment camp, she smuggled a letter to ask her mother to bring along her children, but maria wasn’t brought along. 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 sworn testimony to the High Court on several occasions. She claimed that Adeline Hertogh had given Maria to her for adoption in late 1942.

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 about the end of 1943 or the beginning of 1944." Thereafter the two never saw each other again till 1950.

Anyhow, Maria Hertogh received her 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 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.

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 tried various way to trace their daughter. 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. 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 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 unwilling to leave each another. 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.

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. The marriage could have been a manoeuvre by Aminah to prevent further attempts by the Hertoghs to get back their daughter, but the new couple never consummated their marriage. 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.

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, 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. The judge, Justice Brown, delivered the verdict two weeks later. Justice Brown had two issues on his hand, namely the legality of the marriage and the custody of Maria. The marriage was held invalid and the custody was given to Maria’s natural parent.

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 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 was trying to held back a crowd of several hundred.

The car delivered Maria to the Roman Catholic Convent of the Good Shepherd in Thomson Road.. According to an official of the Netherlands Consulate-General, such arrangement 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. Sensational writing and pictures from the media also further spark off the unhappiness between the Muslims and the Christians.

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.

The appeal hearing opened on 11 December. Maria stayed at the convent and did not attend. Since early morning, crowds carrying banners and flags with star and crescent symbols began to gather around the Supreme Court. By noon, when the hearing eventually began, the restive crowd had grown to 2,000 to 3,000 in number. Unbelievably, the court threw out the appeal within five minutes this convinced the gathering that the colonial legal system was biased against Muslims. The riots erupted.