Higher institutions of learning in Thailand at present (1977) number ten state universities, three national institutes (agriculture, technology and development administration), and ten private colleges (business and vocational). Of these institutions information on Southeast Asian Studies was primarily sought from the ten universities where it is recognized that interest in such studies exists.

All such institutions have a very high input of subjects concerning Thai matters, which outside the Thai setting would be considered as constituting a part of Southeast Asian Studies. In this report, however, Thai subjects are taken for granted, and inquiry is focused on the availability of subjects on other countries of the Southeast Asian region as a qualification for Southeast Asian Studies.

By Southeast Asian Studies one expects in its complete form a comprehensive programme of courses dealing with several aspects of society and culture of as many countries of the region as practicable — geography, history, economics, politics, sociology, anthropology, arts, religion, philosophy, etc., of the area covering as far as Burma to the west, Vietnam to the north, the Philippines to the east and Indonesia to the south. In an incomplete form some individual subjects dealing with some aspects of some countries of the region other than the host country would be counted as part of Southeast Asian Studies. A truly complete programme would also involve research as well as teaching on those subjects, preferably with fieldwork conducted in the specific countries of the topics investigated with adequate study in the vernacular. A less complete programme would rely on standard texts or at best limited library research for teaching and may or may not offer language courses.

By this definition it is anticipated that faculties and departments devoted to scientific and technological disciplines will not offer courses on Southeast Asian Studies as the latter would be largely in the nature of the social sciences and humanities.

Since the end of the American-Vietnamese war, most Southeast Asian nations have become more seriously concerned about improving international communications and collaboration among themselves than ever before. The several formal regional cooperative arrangements organized by their governments to deal with a variety of common area problems have now taken on a new life. At the same time, as regards higher education, officials of the governments and universities of these countries appear to show little, or at best, uneven concern for the organization and development of scholarly resources for research and instruction in the field of Southeast Asian regional studies.

It is in this context of regional as well as national development that this conference has been organized to consider the problems and the potentialities of Southeast Asian area studies in Southeast Asia. At their best, what can such studies contribute to the increased stature and strength of each nation and of the region as a whole? What is “their best”? How can this best be established and maintained, and in how many institutions, when there are so many competing academic and research needs crying for development and so few human and material resources at hand to still these cries?

First, area programmes as such will be considered and then attention will be turned to some of the difficulties experienced in the West in organizing and developing area programmes. Finally, it will be necessary to look with as little bias as possible at the Southeast Asian Studies programme which would support training and research on the area, in the area, by area scholars. The multidisciplinary study of a region, the area programme, is not a new thing in the history of mankind's conscious efforts to understand better the world in which he lives. Neither Greeks nor Chinese lumped together all the Barbarians or Man Ren beyond their borders; rather, they sought to distinguish and thus in a sense to understand Skythians and Ethiopians, Hiung Nu and Lolo. But their interest in such foreigners was immediate, practical, highly empirical, and short-lived.

This paper concerns the growth and present status of Southeast Asian Studies in Australia. By “Southeast Asian Studies” is meant the systematic, interdisciplinary study of human behaviour, including language, in the geographical region of Southeast Asia, through the one educational structure (a department, programme, school or centre of Southeast Asian Studies). Reference will also be made to the study of Southeast Asia as part of the work within single disciplines or subjects, and language courses not related to other teaching about the region.

The formal beginnings of Southeast Asian Studies in Australia can be traced to a request made by the Commonwealth Government to the University of Sydney, the University of Melbourne, and the Canberra University College (at that time a college of Melbourne University; after 1960, part of the Australian National University) that they provide instruction in Indonesian and Malayan Studies. The University of Sydney called for applications to fill the newly created position of Reader in Indonesian and Malayan Studies, in late 1955, but no courses were offered immediately. Melbourne University offered a special one year course in Indonesia Studies during 1956, under the direction of Mr. Zainuddin, a diplomatic representative of the Indonesian Government who was given the status of lecturer. The course included language teaching, and a series of lectures on modern Indonesia. With a few exceptions, all the students taking the course were postgraduate students, who either hoped to go to Indonesia later on (Melbourne was a centre for the Volunteer Graduate scheme, founded by Herbert Feith), or whose daily work in trade and commerce brought them into regular contact with Indonesians. It was hoped that a full-time Senior Lecturer would be appointed to head the Department of Indonesian Studies by 1958. (The appointment of a staff member at Senior Lecturer rank or above by this date appears to be part of the agreement the universities had with the government.)

During the early seventies in Southeast Asia, strong lines were drawn between the concepts “environment” and “development” and the groups identified with them. “Environmentalists” were a very small minority. They were generally young, foreign-educated, urban, ambitious intellectuals. Most were in the universities. The “developmentalists” were the officials, scientists and technicians who dealt with problems of production, economic growth and poverty, had recently gained a confident grasp of how to proceed, and saw little reason to be dissuaded from doing so. On the one hand, in a sense, were the idealists and, on the other, the pragmatists. Both held strong social convictions.

Today the distinctions are no longer meaningful. A convergence has occurred. It is embodied in laws, plans, policies, new agencies, agency operations, university programmes, production techniques and public attitudes. Although conflicts continue, as they inevitably must, environmental norms, and organizational and technical responses to them, permeate development philosophy and practice. The converse is also true; one need only recall the confinement of concern of early environmentalism to relict protection and industrial pollution to recognize how far things have progressed since them. In fact, the environmental and developmental constructs are merging in broad concepts of national realization that strike little difference between the progress of a nation, its earth, and its heritage.

The transition has been rapid. How has it happened? What is the situation today? Where might it lead to? What has been the scholar's role in the progress of events, and what might it become? These are the questions which will be pursued here.

The Past

The process of growth in nations is fundamental to contemporary events in Southeast Asia. The end of colonialism removed constraints on comfortable modes of political and economic accommodation, and replaced sharp boundaries of power and control with a flux requiring reformation of social, political and economic institutions.

The University of Malaya can be justly proud in having pioneered the teaching of Southeast Asian Studies as an undergraduate programme in its Faculty of Arts and Social Science in 1976. The degree of Bachelor of Arts in Southeast Asian Studies has now been awarded annually since 1979 and the Faculty of Arts and Social Science is actively developing a number of other fields of studies partly as a follow-up of the successful introduction of the multi-disciplinary Southeast Asian Studies programme. In order to commemorate the launching of the University of Malaya Southeast Asian Studies programme as well as to consider the “State of the Art” internationally, so to speak, the Faculty of Arts and Social Science organised a Conference on Southeast Asian Studies from 22 — 26 November 1977. It was an unique Malaysian event in more than one way for the organisers selected Kota Kinabalu, the capital of the State of Sabah in Malaysia, as the venue for such a select academic gathering. On the international plane, too, it was felt that Kota Kinabalu would ideally represent the ‘hub’ of Southeast Asia and offer foreign scholars who have long worked on various corners of the region a rare opportunity of visiting the island of Borneo. As it turned out the organisers were more than gratified by the spontaneous response of both benefactors as well as participants to the idea of such a Conference and it was with much reluctance that the actual number attending had to be limited. As one foreign scholar at least remarked subsequently, the timely nature of the meeting was further enhanced by the appropriateness of the venue at the foot of Mt. Kinabalu, the highest point in Southeast Asia.

The Conference itself was divided into several levels:-

(i) a number of distinguished individuals were specially invited to deliver key-note addresses on selected topics encompassing the entire range of what Southeast Asian Studies constitute; a concerted attempt was also made to obtain a comprehensive account of the individual experiences of Southeast Asian Studies in different countries and their Country Reports formed an important element of documentation at the meeting;

Thailand can be described as a market economy country with the government playing the instrumental role in setting the investment pattern. One third of the total investment of the country comes from government sources. The country itself is now in its Fourth Five-Year Development Plan (1977–81). In 1976 the per capita gross domestic product was US$380. The total population in 1977 is estimated at 43 million people with an annual growth rate of 2.6-2.8%.

During the First and Second Development Plans (1961–71), priority was given to the provision of basic economic and social infrastructural services such as the construction of highways, irrigation facilities and power systems, which contributed to the growth rate of around seven per cent per annum during the decade.

Although the overall growth rate was satisfactory, the nature of growth itself exacerbated the income disparity among various income groups and regions of the country. Hence, in the following Third Plan (1972–76) social development was introduced and integrated into the development strategy. On the social side, a three-pronged approach was adopted for the reduction of population growth rate, the improved distribution of economic and social services and the creation of more opportunities for the people. The actual rate of growth of 6.2% was achieved during the Third Plan.

Within the present Fourth Plan, the overweighing priority is given to the strengthening of national security. Area development programmes are being carried out in supporting national security objectives. Concurrently, on the development front, besides the acceleration of economic development, the main objectives are the reduction of income disparities especially through regional development and the reduction of population growth rate to 2.1% at the end of the Fourth Plan. For the first time in Thai development plans, the government adopted a definite policy concerning natural resources rehabilitation and management, with the emphasis on the four basic resources of land, water, forests and minerals.

Introduction

The Man and Biosphere Programme is an interdisciplinary programme of research which aims “to develop the basis within the natural and social sciences for the rational use and conservation of the resources of the biosphere and for the improvement of the global relationship between man and the environment”. This major objective was established by the International Co-ordinating Council for MAB at its first session in November 1971. MAB includes fourteen major project areas:

1. Ecological effects of increasing human activities on tropical and subtropical forest ecosystems.

2. Ecological effects of different land uses and management practices on temperate and mediterranean forest landscapes.

3. Impact of human activities and land use practices on grazing lands: savanna and grassland (from temperate to arid areas).

4. Impact of human activities on the dynamics of arid and semiarid zones' ecosystems, with particular attention to the effects of irrigation.

5. Ecological effects of human activities on the value and resources of lakes, marshes, rivers, deltas, estuaries and coastal zones.

6. Impact of human activities on mountain and tundra ecosystems.

7. Ecology and rational use of island ecosystems.

8. Conservation of natural areas and of the genetic material they contain.

9. Ecological assessment of pest management and fertilizer use on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.

10. Effects on man and his environment of major engineering works.

11. Ecological aspects of urban systems with particular emphasis on energy utilization.

12. Interactions between environmental transformations and the adaptive, demographic and genetic structure of human populations.

13. Perception of environmental quality.

14. Research on environmental pollution and its effect on the biosphere.

Project areas 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 11 have a specific geographic basis while the others relate primarily to human intervention and other processes occurring in all parts of the biosphere; there is therefore an interaction between these two types of project areas.

Good progress has already been made in the establishment of a worldwide network of protected areas, or biosphere reserves, for the conservation of species and genetic diversity and for use in a programme of monitoring research and training on a variety of ecosystems, both natural and man-modified.

Today we take the term “Southeast Asia” for granted and at times it is difficult for us to imagine that it is only since World War II that the term has come into general usage for the countries stretching from Burma to Vietnam and from the Philippines to Indonesia. Prior to this appellations such as Further India, East Indies, and Far Eastern Tropics were the common terms for this region of ours. Changing nomenclatures notwithstanding, Southeast Asia has continued to be an area of considerable vitality and significance to Asia as a whole and the wider world. Moreover, the Southeast Asian lands and societies are bound by so many distinctive and continuous strands and separated by so many cleavages that expressions like “unity within diversity” or “diversity within unity” have become almost synonymous with the region. Thus, we have a Southeast Asia that is ancient yet modern; sufficiently urbanized yet essentially rustic; forward looking yet traditional; politically independent yet seemingly dependent; geographically fragmented yet focal; and, finally, only partly developed yet, in addition to substantial quantities of pineapples, timber, oil, and gas, already a producer of more than 90% of the world's rubber, 75% of its copra, and 60% of its palm oil and tin. In short, Southeast Asia is a complex but extremely exciting region with a tremendous developmental potential. After all, it is larger in area than, say, India and is already the home of more than 300 million people who are expected to increase to some 500 million before the end of this century. And if we are to believe the predictions and projections of economic experts, then Southeast Asia will be one of the fastest growing regions of the world in the 1980s and 1990s. Yet despite such exciting prospects and a cultural heritage of great diversity and ancient lineage, how much do we Southeast Asians really know about our individual countries and those of our immediate fellow neighbours?

It has been said that “every great library is the result of the joint endeavour of scholars and libraries”. Scholars should be involved in the development of the library's resources as much as librarians should be involved in the development of academic and research programmes.

A university or research library is a service unit and in order that it plays its role fully and conpetently it should be closely associated in the planning and development of academic programmes at every stage. The library's relationship to its parent institution must be one of support and response to growth and change. All new teaching and research place demands on the library in some way whether they take the form of new disciplines, new courses or new projects. The preliminary to any discussion about library needs for Southeast Asian Studies is therefore the nature of the Southeast Asian Studies programme itself — the way it is organized, the question of whether it would include postgraduate as well as undergraduate students, its general area of interest as well as its special emphases.

Library provision for Southeast Asian Studies began in North America where area studies have their genesis. With some notable exceptions, this has not taken the form of self-contained Southeast Asian collections. The publications are usually dispersed throughout the entire collection but often there would be a Southeast Asia Reading Room where current newspapers and journals and basic reference works can be found. The special attention to Southeast Asia has been provided instead in the appointment of a Southeast Asian Librarian or Bibliographer. This person would be responsible for developing the collection on Southeast Asia and assisting staff and students in utilizing its resources. Do Southeast Asian libraries need such a staff appointment and how do they cope with the problems of Southeast Asian acquisitions which form such an important part of his duties? Here we find the view from Southeast Asia somewhat different from that of North America or Western Europe.

The general conception outside France is that Southeast Asian Studies are centred mainly on the area which before the Second World War was known as “French Indochina”, and that, with the exception of studies on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, few French studies are devoted to this part of the world. The conception has been reinforced by the fact that English is now the principal medium in this area, and that very few Southeast Asian scholars are at this moment able to use French sources or French studies.

Historical Development

However, French interest in the “East Indies” is very old; in fact it began almost as early as that of the Portuguese. As early as 1529 the two brothers, Jean and Raoul Parmentier, left, on board La Pensée and Le Sâcre, the harbour of Dieppe on the northwestern coast of France, for the “Spice Islands”. They left us a journal of this first French expedition which recorded their meeting with the people of the western coast of Sumatra, near Tiku. One interesting fact to note is that they had with them as truchement (interpreter), a certain Jean Masson, who was attached to the captain of the expedition, Jean Parmentier, and who acted as the chief intermediary between the French fleet and the Malay Molana. Jean Masson must have had a good command of at least the spoken language (acquired during a previous voyage to the East?) as both sides seem to have understood each other very well. This interest continued during the following centuries and in fact French ships called at Malay, Siamese and Filipino ports as often as at the Vietnamese ones.

During the seventeenth century there were well-known travellers who wrote long reports on the main sultanates of the Archipelago, especially Francois Martin de Vitre and Augustin de Beaulieu who went to Aceh (the former in 1602 and the latter in 1620, during the time of Iskandar Muda).

Introduction

The Committee for Coordination of Investigations of the Lower Mekong Basin (Mekong Committee) was established in 1957 by the Governments of Cambodia (renamed Democratic Kampuchea), Laos (renamed the Lao People's Democratic Republic), Thailand and the Republic of Vietnam (now a part of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam) under the aegis of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, (ESCAP), of the United Nations. This Committee has embarked on the gigantic and long term task of planning the joint development of the water resources and related resources of the lower Mekong river and its tributaries (the Mekong project), “for the benefit of all the people of the basin, without distinction as to nationality, religion or politics”. The primary means for this development will be a series of dams and associated water control projects to produce hydroelectric power, supply water for irrigation, industry, and public systems, regulate water flow for protection against floods and salinity intrusion, and to improve the navigation and communication network.

The Mekong project is certainly among the most ambitious and comprehensive river basin development efforts ever initiated. It is proposed to develop the water resources in a vast basin drained by the world's sixth largest river, in terms of the 475,000,000m of water discharged annually into the South China Sea. Another salient feature of this project is that it is planned for integrated river development that envisages the use of water for several purposes simultaneously, taking into consideration the entire gamut of economic, social and environmental conditions throughout the basin. A project of this magnitude would necessarily involve large-scale environmental manipulations which will result in extensive changes in the basin's ecosystems. These changes would be inevitably accompanied by significant feedbacks, both positive and negative. The question therefore is: will the contemplated environmental changes, on balance, enhance the vitality and productivity of the Mekong ecoystems and yield sustained, long-term benefits to the people of the basin, or will they disrupt the ecosystems and thus contribute to the deterioration of the environment to a degree where the very goals of the project would be negated?

By way of an initial ideological stance, let us accept that the environmental concern which has erupted in the last decade in many parts of the world is both a positive and a permanent feature. It is positive and progressive in that it recognizes a deep-seated community urge to live in “productive harmony” with the natural systems by which we are surrounded, and that it compels a society to define its values and mobilize its social resources to realize them. It is permanent because it has, to all intents and purposes, become ingrained in the legal and administrative systems of many countries, as well as achieving international recognition through the holding of conferences, and in the accommodation of environmentalism within the structure of the United Nations itself.

Educational establishments and programmes must inevitably reflect this environmental concern. Whether or not educational establishments were the breeding grounds of the environmental movement, they cannot fail ultimately to incorporate a concern which has fast become part of the fabric of society. Universities in Western countries partly fostered the environmental movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, but very largely they followed it, or endeavoured to follow it. Environmentalism has been co-opted into the universities, showing up in the guise of research centres devoted to environmental issues, and a range of instructional programmes designed to introduce students to basic environmental concepts.

None the less, the basic propositions of environmentalism remain controversial. On the one hand we have those who prophesy universal ecological disaster lurking in the future unless mankind mends its ways. Among the best known of many advocates of this position we may cite two. Schumacher is concerned to show that many of the problems we presently discern arise from our devotion to the tenets of modern Western economics and business methods:

This paper traces the background developments in human ecology in the Philippines and shows that its diverse and still separate origins and trends have begun to merge into a unified interdisciplinary approach. “Human ecology” is defined. Its particular developments in the Philippines are described by tracing early work in several disciplines. The paper then discusses work since 1972 in Philippine human ecological research, teaching and action programmes.

Considerable confusion exists regarding what human ecology is and what role it may play in research, teaching and applications. This uncertainty is a barrier to the development of the field in the Philippines. But the Philippines is by no means unique in this regard. It is timely that the diverse contributors to this presently quasi field seek agreement on an inclusive, interdisciplinary and dynamic definition and on the roles and goals of human ecology. For instance, is there really need for a special “human” ecology, why not just ecology? before we answer, it is worth reconsidering the term “ecology”.

A succinct definition of ecology is difficult. Growing public concern about environmental degradation has given rise to distorted usages that tend, by treating manking and environment as independent of each other, to lead away from a productive ecological perspective. Steps toward a workable definition must begin therefore with what ecology is not. It is not equivalent to environment, although it is presently used in this sense by some environmentalists and most of the lay public. Neither is it synonymous with conservation and narrowly construed nor does it, in any strict sense, refer to the unforeseen consequences of many of man's activities, as in the phrase “ecological boomerang”. In fact, the standard dictionary definition of ecology — “the study of relations between organisms and their environment” — is itself misleading if it is not understood as requiring a holistic, reciprocal mode of thought.

The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies is an autonomous research centre for scholars and other specialists concerned with modern Southeast Asia, particularly the multifaceted problems of development and modernization, and political and social change. The Institute is supported by annual grants from Singapore and other governments, as well as donations from international and private organizations and individuals. It has neither students nor teaching functions, being purely a research body. In addition to support staff, the Institute has 25 to 30 academics and other specialists working at the Institute at any one time. About half of these are Southeast Asians, including Burmese, Indonesians, Malaysians, Filipinos, Singaporeans, Thais, and Vietnamese, and others come from as far afield as Europe, Japan and North America. Though from different disciplinary and national backgrounds, all these scholars share a common concern, that is, an interest in the problems of Southeast Asia. They function as a community of scholars and interact among themselves and with the public at large through a series of seminars and professional meetings. Their research findings are published through various outlets of the Institute and distributed all over the world. In other words, the Institute is not the proverbial ivory tower. Its involvement in the region's affairs is both direct and contemporary. It seeks to be not only a research organization devoted to nurturing a scholarly environment conducive to maximum intellectual creativity, but also one that is keenly alive to public issues and needs. In this light it was quite natural that we should get involved in an effort to take stock of some of the critical areas of concern necessary to a proper understanding of Southeast Asia. The setting for this occasion was the Sabah Conference on Southeast Asian Studies held in Kota Kinabalu in 1977.

The Conference attracted a large number of scholars and other specialists from both within and outside the region, and the volume that follows is based on papers specially written for the meeting.

Once the case had been brought before the courts, it ceased to be a private issue between two families. Talk about it spread through Singapore and beyond. Its religious and racial undercurrents began to bubble to the surface.

The central figure was a pretty thirteen-year-old girl, fair-haired and brown-eyed. Born of the Christian west and nurtured in the Muslim east, she exemplified the upheavals of a war which was still raw in the memory.

The press scented a story. They sought out Che Aminah and approached the Dutch authorities. They interviewed ex-Sergeant Hertogh at Bergen-op-Zoom, Holland. They tried the Social Welfare Department, both at the Old Supreme Court and at the Girls Homecraft Centre, York Hill.

The Department confirmed that, Maria was in their care but, as was normal practice, refused to allow reporters to interview Maria or to discuss the case while it was sub judice. Maria's father in Holland acknowledged that his daughter had been found and that he hoped to get her back, indicating that there was more behind the story than he was then prepared to tell. Che Aminah and the Dutch authorities in Singapore gave their own versions in response to press enquiries.

So by 19 May, when the hearing was resumed, public interest was widely aroused. A large number of local reporters and representatives of the foreign press were gathered at the approaches to the Supreme Court and in the office outside the Chief Justice's chambers.

Maria was brought to the Welfare office in the Old Supreme Court by Miss B.N. Tan, Lady Superintendent of the York Hill Home, where Maria had been living. She was dressed in European clothes, the idea being to make her less conspicuous. She wore a printed mauve floral dress. Her hair was in two pigtails. She had two red hair clips, two tiny gold earrings and a locket on a thin gold chain round her neck.

From the afternoon of Saturday, 2 December until she left Singapore and her Malay life forever, Maria lived at the Convent of the Good Shepherd. She was cut off from Che Aminah, from Mansoor Adabi whom she had for four months believed to be her husband and from all her Malay friends. She saw only her mother, Adeline Hertogh, the nuns and other girls at the Convent, and a stream of newspaper reporters.

The reason for the delay in carrying out Mr. Justice Brown's order restoring her to her parents was that Che Aminah and Mansoor Adabi had appealed against the judgement; and they applied for a stay of execution pending the hearing of the appeal. Maria was required to remain within the jurisdiction of Singapore courts until a decision was reached on this application. It was considered in the High Court presided over by the Chief Justice on the 11 December and formally dismissed on the following day.

Earlier, there had been rejoicing in the Muslim community when the Appeal Court in July quashed the orders made on the first custody application of the Netherlands Consul-General. This was regarded by Muslims as a just victory, amply vindicating Che Aminah's claims. When Maria married Mansoor Adabi a few days later, Muslims were positive that the marriage was in order.

The challenge to the marriage was resented by Muslims but they awaited the outcome of renewed court proceedings with some confidence. The shock was all the sharper when the Judge declared the marriage invalid. The legal reasons for the decision were not comprehended. Muslims felt strongly that it violated the Islamic law of marriage.

After the intense public interest in the case over many months, injudicious publicity in both English and Malay newspapers now fanned protest into flames that were to destroy lives – not only the life to which Maria had been bred.

At this stage, the so-called Nadra Action Committee, formally constituted on 9 December, took the floor and sought the limelight.

The fateful event was the marriage of Maria to Mansoor Adabi which took place, by Muslim rites, on Tuesday, 1 August 1950 in the house of Mr. M.A. Majid at 139 Serangoon Road, Singapore.

Mansoor Adabi was born in Kota Bahru, Kelantan. He received his early education in Kelantan and after the war came to Singapore where he attended Victoria School. His mother, Che Wok Adabi, was a friend of Che Amman's. In 1950, he was twenty-two years old and a teacher-in-training at the Bukit Panjang Government School.

With Che Aminah, he had twice visited Maria at York Hill. “I felt something stir within me,” he said. Maria later confirmed that they were then “mutually attracted”.

Mansoor went with Che Aminah to fetch Maria when she was discharged from York Hill on 28 July. They went to Mr. Majid's house where they were all staying, Mr. Majid being Mansoor's adoptive father. On Monday, 31 July, Mansoor proposed to Maria and was accepted. They were married at 9.30 p.m. the following day.

Mr. Majid, at the time, said that it was not Che Aminah's wish that Maria should get married at that juncture. Che Aminah later testified before Mr. Justice Brown that she told Maria to consider the matter carefully and that when Maria affirmed that she wanted to get married to Mansoor, she felt she could not interfere because Maria was already “grown up”, having attained puberty in July 1949.

Immediately after the marriage, Che Aminah said, “Maria is like a diamond to me but I am happy now that she is married to the man she wants.” Mr. Justice Brown, while describing the marriage as a discreditable manoeuvre, added that he was satisfied that Maria was neither forced nor tricked into it.

The Kathi (Judge in Muslim affairs) officiating at the ceremony was Tuan Haji Ahmad bin Haji Halim, who claimed by virtue of his office to have the right to act as Maria's guardian (wali) in the absence of her father and therefore the right of giving consent to the marriage.