Njai

The njai ([ɲai]; Enhanced Indonesian Spelling System: nyai) were women who were kept as housekeepers, companions, and concubines in the Dutch East Indies (modern-day Indonesia).

[2][3] Author Rob Nieuwenhuys described the position of the njai as always subservient, being the white man's housekeeper and companion, before she was his concubine.

[4] The term njai, also found in the spellings nyai, njaie, nyaie, nyahi or nyi, comes from a Balinese word meaning sister.

Without contact with Dutch women, they began turning to their female slaves (mostly originating from Sulawesi, Bali, and outside the archipelago) for sexual services.

By 1620 the habit had become so prevalent that Governor-General Jan Pieterszoon Coen passed a law forbidding Dutchmen from keeping concubines.

[12] To prevent a relapse, Coen began bringing orphans from the Netherlands, termed compagniesdochters, to become wives of company employees.

There were also concerns that these women were only accepting marriage for personal gain and that they would attempt to draw their husbands back to the Netherlands – and out of the employment of the Dutch East Indies Company.

[13] In the 1650s, Governors-General Carel Reyniersz and Joan Maetsuycker began promoting interracial marriage between Dutchmen and indigenous women, who were thought to be less greedy and less likely to ask their husbands to leave the Indies.

The Indies government, following a decree by Governor-General Alexander Willem Frederik Idenburg, would not hire them, and businesses attempted to promote endogamy.

During the occupation, the njai and their mixed-race children were forcefully separated from European men, who were put into internment camps.

Coen, in a 1620 letter, described njai as lazy (except in their sexual deeds), stupid, dishonest, and willing to kill the persons they hated.

Some of the earliest were syair (poems), published in 1907 by Lie Kim Hok and Tjiang O. S. respectively in 1897; both were adaptations of Tjerita Njai Dasima.

[29] A njai character named Nyai Ontosoroh, appear in one of Pramoedya Ananta Toer's epic novel Buru Quartet, This Earth of Mankind (1980).