Sirimavo Bandaranaike
Sirima Ratwatte Dias Bandaranaike, commonly known as Sirimavo Bandaranaike, was a Sri Lankan politician who became the world's first female prime minister when she was elected Prime Minister of Sri Lanka in 1960. She chaired the Sri Lanka Freedom Party from 1960 to 1994, and served three terms as prime minister from 1960 to 1965, from 1970 to 1977, and from 1994 to 2000 under the presidency of her daughter Chandrika Kumaratunga.
Born into a Sinhalese Kandyan aristocratic family, Bandaranaike was educated in Catholic, English-medium schools, but remained a Buddhist, and spoke Sinhala as well as English. As a hostess for her husband S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, who founded the socialist SLFP in 1951 and became prime minister in 1956, she became an informal advisor, and focused on improving the lives of women and girls in rural areas of Sri Lanka.
Following her husband's assassination in 1959, she was persuaded by the party leadership to join active politics and succeed her late husband as chairwoman, and returned her party to government by defeating prime minister Dudley Senanayake's UNP in the July 1960 election. She was then unseated by Senanayake in the 1965 election and became Leader of the Opposition, before winning a large majority in 1970 due to a cleverly structured election alliance with rival Marxist parties.
Bandaranaike attempted to reform the former Dominion of Ceylon into a socialist republic by nationalising organisations in the banking, education, industry, media and trade sectors. Changing the administrative language from English to Sinhala and routinely campaigning on Sinhalese nationalist and anti-Tamil policies exacerbated discontent among the native Tamil population, and with the estate Tamils, who had become stateless under the Citizenship Act of 1948.
During Bandaranaike's first two terms as prime minister the country experienced high unemployment, inflation and taxes, and became dependent on food imports. Surviving an attempted coup d'état in 1962, as well as a 1971 insurrection of radical youths, in 1972 she oversaw the drafting of a new constitution and the formation of the Sri Lankan republic, separating it from the British Empire. In 1975, Bandaranaike created what would eventually become the Sri Lankan Ministry of Women and Child Affairs, and played a large role abroad as a negotiator and a leader among the Non-Aligned Nations.
After losing against J. R. Jayewardene in a landslide in the 1977 election, Bandaranaike was stripped of her civil rights in 1980 for claimed abuses of power during her tenure and barred from government for seven years. The new government initially improved the domestic economy, but failed to address social issues, and led the country into a protracted civil war against Tamil militants, which escalated in brutality, especially when the Indian Peace Keeping Force intervened. Bandaranaike opposed the Indian intervention, believing it violated Sri Lankan sovereignty.
Failing to win the office of President against new UNP leader Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1988, she restored her party, which had by now developed more centrist policies and advocated for a reconciliatory approach towards Tamils in the civil war, as a relevant force in the first parliamentary election after 12 years and served a second time as Leader of the Opposition from 1989 to 1994. When her daughter, who succeeded her as party leader, won the 1994 presidential election, Bandaranaike was appointed to her third term as prime minister and served until her retirement in 2000, two months prior to her death.
Early life (1916–1940)
Bandaranaike was born Sirima Ratwatte on 17 April 1916 at Ellawala Walawwa, her aunt's residence in Ratnapura, in British Ceylon. Her mother was Rosalind Hilda Mahawalatenne Kumarihamy, an informal Ayurvedic physician, and her father was Barnes Ratwatte, a native headman and politician. Her maternal grandfather Mahawalatenne, and later her father, served as Rate Mahatmaya, a native headman, of Balangoda. Her father was a member of the Radala Ratwatte family, chieftains of the Kingdom of Kandy. Her paternal ancestry included her uncle Sir Jayatilaka Cudah Ratwatte, the first person from Kandy to receive a British knighthood, as well as courtiers serving Sinhalese monarchs. One of these, Ratwatte, Dissawa of Matale, was a signatory of the 1815 Kandyan Convention.Sirima was the eldest in a family of six children. She had four brothers, Barnes Jr., Seevali, Mackie, and Clifford, and one sister, Patricia, who married Colonel Edward James Divitotawela, founder of the Central Command of the Ceylon Army. The family resided at the walawwa, or colonial manor house, of Sirima's maternal grandfather Mahawalatenne, and then later at their own walawwa in Balangoda. From a young age, Sirima had access to her grandfather's vast library of literary and scientific works. She first attended a private kindergarten in Balangoda, moved briefly in 1923 to the primary classes of Ferguson High School in Ratnapura, and was then sent to boarding school at St Bridget's Convent, Colombo. Though her education was in the Catholic school system, Sirima remained a practising Buddhist throughout her life and was fluent in both English and Sinhala.
After completing her schooling at age 19, Sirima Ratwatte became involved in social work, distributing food and medicine to jungle villages, organising clinics and helping create rural industry to improve the living standards of village women. She became the treasurer of the Social Service League, serving in that capacity until 1940. Over the next six years, she lived with her parents while they arranged her marriage. After rejecting two suitors – a relative, and the son of the first family of Ceylon – Ratwatte's parents were contacted by a matchmaker who proposed a union with Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike, an Oxford-educated lawyer-turned-politician, who was at the time Minister of Local Administration in the State Council of Ceylon. Initially, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike was not considered to be from an "acceptable" family, as the Ratwattes were an aristocratic Kandyan family, which had inherited their service to the traditional royal family, while the Bandaranaikes were a wealthy family from the low-country, which had been in service of the colonial rulers for centuries. Astrologers reported their horoscopes were compatible, the benefits of uniting the families was weighed, and approval was given by the Ratwatte family. The couple, who had previously met, were in agreement with the choice.
Raising a family, social work (1940–1959)
On 2 October 1940, Ratwatte and Bandaranaike married at the Mahawelatenne Walawwa in what was dubbed "the wedding of the century" by the press for its grandeur. The newly married couple moved into Wendtworth in Colombo's Guildford Crescent, which they rented from Lionel Wendt. Their daughters, Sunethra and Chandrika, were born at Wendtworth where the family lived until 1946, when S.W.R.D.'s father bought them a mansion known as Tintagel at Rosmead Place in Colombo.From this point onward, the family lived part of the year at Tintagel and part of the year at S.W.R.D.'s ancestral manor, Horagolla Walawwa. A son, Anura was born at Tintagel in 1949. Over the next 20 years, Sirima Bandaranaike devoted most of her time to raising her family and playing hostess to her husband's many political acquaintances.
All three of Bandaranaike's children were educated abroad. Sunetra studied at Oxford, Chandrika at the University of Paris, and Anura at the University of London. All would later return and serve in the Sri Lankan government.
In 1941 Bandaranaike joined the Lanka Mahila Samiti, the country's largest women's voluntary organisation. She participated in many of the social projects initiated by the Mahila Samiti for the empowerment of rural women and disaster relief. One of her first projects was an agricultural programme to meet food production shortages. Her first office, as secretary of the organisation, involved meeting with farming experts to develop new methods for producing yields of rice crops. Over time, Bandaranaike served as the treasurer, vice-president, and eventually president of Mahila Samiti, focusing on issues of girls' education, women's political rights, and family planning. She was also a member of the All Ceylon Buddhist Women's Association, the Cancer Society, the Ceylon National Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis, and the Nurses Welfare Association.
Bandaranaike often accompanied S.W.R.D. on official trips, both locally and abroad. She and her husband were both present after the psychiatric hospital in Angoda was bombed by the Japanese during the Easter Sunday Raid in 1942, killing many. As Ceylon moved toward self-governing status in 1947, S.W.R.D. became more active in the nationalist movement. He ran for – and was elected to – the House of Representatives from the Attanagalla Electoral District. He was appointed Minister of Health and served as Leader of the House, but became increasingly frustrated with the inner workings and policies of the United National Party. Though he did not encourage Bandaranaike to engage on political topics and was dismissive of her in front of colleagues, S.W.R.D. came to respect her judgment.
In 1951, she persuaded him to resign from the United National Party and establish the Sri Lanka Freedom Party. Bandaranaike campaigned in S.W.R.D.'s Attanagalla constituency during the 1952 parliamentary election, while he travelled around the country to garner support. Though the Freedom Party won only nine seats during that election, S.W.R.D. was elected to Parliament and became Leader of the Opposition.
When fresh elections were called in 1956 by Prime Minister Sir John Kotelawala, S.W.R.D. sensed an opportunity and formed the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna, a broad four-party coalition, to contest the 1956 elections. Bandaranaike once again campaigned for her husband in Attanagalla, in her home town of Balangoda, and in Ratnapura for the Freedom Party. The Mahajana Eksath Peramuna won a landslide victory and S.W.R.D. became the prime minister.
While on a state visit to Malaysia on its Independence in 1957, the couple had to cut short their stay when they received news that Bandaranaike's father was gravely ill following a heart attack. He died two weeks after their hasty return.
Bandaranaike was at home in Rosmead Place on the morning of 25 September 1959, when her husband was shot multiple times by a Buddhist monk, disgruntled over what he believed to be lack of support for traditional medicine. Bandaranaike accompanied her husband to hospital, where he succumbed to his wounds the following day.
In the political chaos that followed under the caretaker government of Wijeyananda Dahanayake, many cabinet ministers were removed, and some were arrested and tried for the assassination. The Mahajana Eksath Peramuna coalition collapsed without S.W.R.D.'s influence, and elections were called for March 1960 to fill the seat for the Attanagalla constituency. Bandaranaike reluctantly agreed to run as an independent candidate, but before the election could be held, Parliament was dissolved, and she decided not to contest the seat. When the election was held in March 1960, the United National Party won a four-seat majority over the Sri Lanka Freedom Party. Dudley Senanayake, the new prime minister, was defeated within a month in a vote of confidence and a second general election was called for July 1960.