Concubines were caught between two worlds
By Ida Indawati Khouw
Concubines were tolerated as a necessary social reality in the Dutch East Indies for lower-ranking colonists prohibited from bringing their wives from the homeland. But it was not simply a life of luxury for concubines, who held no legal rights within their relationships and were ostracized by their own communities. This is the 75th article in our series on old Batavia.
JAKARTA (JP): In crude terms, it was a matter of trade, of giving something and getting something else as payment in return.
Except in this case the goods were young girls and women.
"From his sacks the (Dutch) great lord pulled out an envelope and handed it over to my father ... I knew later that inside the envelope was 25 Dutch guilders, the handover of myself to him and a promise that my father would be promoted to become a cashier ... That's it, Ann, a simple ceremony in which a father sold his own daughter... "
This is how Nyai (concubine) Ontosoroh tells her daughter Annelies about the way she married the latter's father in the once-banned novel Bumi Manusia (The Abode of Humans) by Pramoedya Ananta Toer.
In a departure from the flowery novels during the Dutch colonial era which romanticized the lot of the nyai, Pramoedya describes a concubine who is struggling for her rights and those of her children.
According to Ibnu Wahyudi in his doctoral thesis The Nyai in Njai Dasima, Nyai Ratna and Njai Alimah: A Reflection of Indonesian Women's Lives as Concubines of Europeans in Indonesia's Colonial Period, the nyai phenomenon was indeed a dominant theme in novels produced before the founding of Balai Pustaka, the Dutch colonial publishing house, including the famous Njai Dasima written by Eurasian writer G. Francis.
But the prevalent fictional treatment of this theme helps illustrate that in colonial society, concubinage was regarded as a social reality.
Ibnu noted that the term nyai not only referred to a concubine of a European or Chinese man in colonial society, but also was used as a respectful term of address for older women.
The history of concubinage was as old as the arrival of Westerners here in the 16th century with the Dutch East India Company (VOC).
The practice of taking concubines began with a regulation barring some VOC employees, mostly from the lower ranks, from bringing their wives from the Netherlands. As Ibnu wrote, concubinage became the most appropriate alternative for several reasons, including to meet their sexual needs, but also to reinstate the inferior social position of the indigenous population compared to their Western masters.
Actual marriage between Westerners and local women was almost impossible, based on an antimiscegenation decree of 1617.
In such a social setting, concubinage flourished, with women forced by circumstance, or taking the opportunity afforded them, to try to change their status in life.
Numerous
Keeping a concubine was not reserved solely for low-ranking officials. In her article Barracks-Concubinage in the Indies, 1887-1920, Hanneke Ming said that nyai were numerous and belonged to all strata of Indo-European society.
"Not only the soldiers in the barracks, but also most of the generals, field and other officers, governor of territories, residents, senior and other officials had a nyai if they are not married," Ming said.
Yet the life of Ma Sarinah, who lived with a soldier named Jan Camphuys in an army barracks, may have been typical of many concubines. Ma Sarinah cooked his food, mended his clothes and received his blows, Ming wrote.
When he returned to the Netherlands, she was expecting their fifth child. Jan never came back and the money he had promised never reached Ma Sarinah, who concluded that Jan had died. She could claim no pension to support their children.
Ming said the legal rights of the nyai were virtually nonexistent, even less than the most menial household servant.
"The soldier who returned to Europe had three options; simply leave his family, or he could try to turn the family over to some other soldier remaining in the Indies. Finally he could try to place his children in one of the various charitable institutions. The mother would then go back to the kampong or try to earn a living as a babu or seamstress."
By living with a European soldier, the women had lost status among their own people.
"If such a woman is expelled from the barracks, owning nothing, and (she is) usually in no position to work to support her children," Ming wrote. "None of the men will be eager to take her as his mate, and in most cases it can be predicted that, in dire need, she will be forced to turn to prostitution for her livelihood."
There were attempts by the VOC authorities, especially under Batavia founder Governor General J.P. Coen who imposed strict rules on sexual morals, to eradicate concubinage because it "resulted in abortion, infanticide and sometimes in the poisoning of the master by a jealous concubine."
But concubinage was so rampant that the regulation was unenforceable. Even in the puritanical 19th century, concubinage and casual sexual encounters were the norm for single European and Chinese men involved with local women in the colony, historian Susan Abeyasekere said in her book Jakarta A History.
"Although the liaison was unmentionable in polite Batavian society, unofficially it was recognized since many young European males (especially those in the army) could not afford to marry a European woman."
If the women were abandoned by their partners, Abeyasekere said they sometimes could parlay their higher social status and acquired wealth into opening new businesses.
Concubinage also gave birth to a social group of the Eurasians or Indo-Europeans.
In reality Eurasians, often known as "Indos", were in a marginal position. Ibnu said that many of the children of the mixed unions were abandoned by their parents, left to wander from family to family in native villages and presenting a burden to society.
"The life of Eurasians in Indonesia's colonial society was far from easy. They had to fight for existence in an unfavorable situation," he said.