Hausman Baboe

Hausman Baboe was a colonial head of Kuala Kapuas district of Central Kalimantan in the Dutch East Indies; he was also an early Dayak journalist and an Indonesian nationalist. Baboe was born into an aristocratic family of Dayak Ngaju people and served as head of Kuala Kapuas under the Dutch colonial government but was dismissed from his post due to his anti-colonial remarks. He became a prominent Dayak political figure and was several times accused of being a communist due to his close association with the left-wing political party Sarekat Rakjat. Despite being a Christian, his Indonesian nationalist ideals drew him close to Sarekat Islam.

Baboe started several congresses of native Kalimantan organizations and attempted to invite Oemar Said Tjokroaminoto to his congress, which caused unrest across Kalimantan and a subsequent travel ban by the Dutch East Indies government. Baboe was executed in 1943 after the occupying Japanese military accused him of collaborating with former Dutch residents.

Early life and education Hausman Baboe was born in Hampatong village in the Kuala Kapuas, a town that is now the capital of Kapuas Regency. There are conflicting sources for his birth year; possible dates include 1880, 1881, and 1885.

Baboe was educated by Christian missionaries. It is unclear if he ever pursued higher education due to a lack of records. He was appointed as head of the Kuala Kapuas district despite it being unclear if he fulfilled the requirements to do so, such as receiving a higher education. Heads of districts usually needed to be graduates of OSVIA (Opleiding School Voor Inlandsche Ambtenaren), the indigenous civil-servant school. In February 1922, Baboe was dismissed from his job as district chief due to his increasingly anti-colonial remarks, and Pakat Dayak's support for a Sarekat Islam insurrection in Sampit and Pangkalan Bun.

In 1920, Baboe established a cooperative under Pakat Dayak. He was described by missionary records as "susceptible to communist ideas" In 1924, Baboe founded a school for Dayak called Hollandsche Dajak School, which was used to spread nationalist ideas among Dayak youths. Together with George Obus and Tjilik Riwut, Baboe is regarded as a pioneer of the nationalist movement in what is today Central Kalimantan, and he was crucial for the spread of Indonesian nationalism within Kalimantan. Baboe's ideas led to the creation of Central Kalimantan province in 1957.

In November 1938, Dayak political movements again tried to be appointed to the Volksraad under the name "Committee for Dayak Tribal Awareness". Its members, who were led by Baboe's nephew Mahir Mahar, were civil servants who had been educated as students and teachers at Baboe's schools. One of his sons Ruslan Baboe later became a prominent Indonesian diplomat, working as a consul for Indonesia in San Francisco, and later as Indonesian ambassador to Hungary between 1970 and 1974.

A street in Palangka Raya is named after Hausman Baboe.

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