Tan Cheng Lock pushed to protect women’s rights, says granddaughter

 Tan Siok Choo says the MCA founder was especially concerned with the marital rights of widows and the ‘mui tsai’ bondservant system.

Tan Siok Choo said her grandfather, Tan Cheng Lock, pushed for the enactment of the pre-independence Civil Marriage Act 1940 to protect widows’ rights to their husbands’ estates.

PETALING JAYA:

Besides being a respected politician and a captain of industry, one of Malaysia’s founding fathers Tan Cheng Lock was also an advocate of women’s rights, says his granddaughter Tan Siok Choo.

Cheng Lock, who was also the MCA founder, pioneered reforms, particularly in marital rights.

Siok Choo said Cheng Lock pushed for the enactment of the pre-independence Civil Marriage Act 1940, which required civil marriages to be registered and monogamous, to protect widows’ rights to their husbands’ estates.

“Chinese marriages, especially customary marriages, were totally a minefield. There were no written regulations on how they should be carried out.

“All they needed to do was offer prayers at their ancestral altars, declare they were married and that was it,” Siok Choo told FMT in a recent interview.

Siok Choo, 73, was speaking to FMT after the recent launch of the biography “One Country, One People: The Life and Legacy of Tun Tan Cheng Lock”, which she edited with academic Heng Pek Koon.

She said in many cases, the wives of wealthy men were unable to claim their husbands’ estates because there was no documented proof of marriage.

She pointed to the Six Widows’ Case – a prominent case in 1908 – in which six women claiming to be the widows of a man who died in Singapore sought parts of his estate.

“My grandfather felt this was very unfair to women. He pushed very strongly for the Civil Marriage Act, under which all non-Muslim marriages had to be registered.

“To symbolise how strongly he felt on this issue, he actually remarried my grandmother under the Civil Marriage Act,” she said.

Cheng Lock also fought to abolish the “mui tsai” system – a now-extinct practice imported from China under which young girls from poor families were employed or “fostered” as bondservants by wealthy households, leaving them vulnerable to mistreatment.

“You would essentially buy them, take them into your households and they were yours to do whatever you wanted. There was very little protection. Again, my grandfather felt this was wrong,” said Siok Choo.

“He pushed very hard for the Mui Tsai (Ordinance 1932), which gave them some legal protection. He was helped by the fact that Hong Kong had done it.”

Siok Choo said Cheng Lock also rewrote his will to give her two aunts, Alice and Agnes Tan, equal shares with her father, former finance minister Tan Siew Sin, after a chance encounter with the daughter of a friend who had become a prostitute.

The woman told Cheng Lock that she was forced to become a prostitute after her father left her nothing in his will. The woman was unmarried, uneducated and her brother had kicked her out despite being responsible for her care.

“My grandfather was so upset by this incident that he went back and changed his will. My father was married in February 1947. (Cheng Lock) changed his will even though my father had just got married and was likely to have children. He didn’t care,” she said. - FMT