Mohammad Husni Thamrin

Mohammad Husni Thamrin
Portrait of Mohammad Husni Thamrin
Born	16 February 1894 Weltevreden, Batavia, Dutch East Indies
Died	11 January 1941(1941-01-11) (aged 46) Senen, Batavia, Dutch East Indies
Resting place	Karet Bivak Cemetery, Jakarta
Nationality	Indonesian
Occupation	Politician
Years active	1919–1940
Awards	National Hero of Indonesia

Mohammad Husni Thamrin (16 February 1894 – 11 January 1941) was an Indonesian political thinker and National Hero.

Thamrin was born in Weltevreden, Batavia (modern day Jakarta), Dutch East Indies, on 16 February 1894. His father, Thamrin Mohd. Tabri, was the son of an English businessman who owned hotel Ort in Batavia, but had been raised by his Javanese uncle and had adopted his name. Thamrin was therefore born into a neo-priyayi class and in 1906, his father became district head (wedana) under Governor General Johan Cornelis van der Wijck. After graduating from Koning Willem III Gymnasium, Thamrin took several government jobs before working for the shipping company Koninklijke Paketvaart-Maatschappij.

In 1919, Thamrin was elected a member of the Jakarta City Council. He later became deputy mayor. In 1927 he was elected to the Volksraad; he soon formed the National Fraction (Fraksi Nasional) to unite ten groups of Indonesian nationalists under one flag and counteract the reactionary Fatherlands Club (Vaderlandsche Club). Along with Dr. Soetomo, Parindra's chair, Thamrin believed that independence could be achieved through cooperation with the Dutch colonial government.

As a Volksraad member, Thamrin and Kusumom Utoyo went to eastern Sumatra to look into working conditions at plantations there. Disgusted by what they found, upon his return Thamrin gave a speech condemning the plantation owners. He criticised the legalised gambling and corporal punishments given for minor offences. In 1935 he was a founding member of the Grand Indonesia Party (Partai Indonesia Raya, or Parindra).

After the death of Dr. Soetomo in 1938, Thamrin became deputy chair of Parindra. In at a meeting of the Volksraad in 1939, Thamrin proposed that the Dutch terms Nederlands Indie, Nederlands Indisch and Inlander (Dutch Indies, Dutch Indian, and Dutch Indians) be replaced with the nationalist terms Indonesia, Indonesisch, and Indonesier (Indonesia, Indonesian, and Indonesians). Although this received majority support in the Volksraad, the Dutch government vetoed the motion. After his request, the colonial government kept him under surveillance. By 1940, his proposal for the use of the term Indonesian had begun to receive consideration, much to Thamrin's perplexity.