Summary: Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka, the world's first female prime minister, has died at age 84. She rose to power in 1960 following her husband's assassination, leading his political party and establishing a family dynasty that has dominated Sri Lankan politics for decades. Her death occurred shortly after she voted in a parliamentary election.
Main Topics Covered:
1. The death and political legacy of Sirimavo Bandaranaike.
2. Her historic role as the world's first woman prime minister and her family's political dynasty.
3. The contrast between her policies (Sinhalese nationalism, state socialism) and those of her daughter and successor.
4. The national mourning and funeral arrangements following her death.
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Women’s History Month
From 2000: Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka Dies at 84; First Woman Premier
She rose to power in 1960 as a widow and mother of three, becoming the first woman in the world to serve as a prime minister.
This obituary was originally published on Oct. 11, 2000. It is being republished for a package for Women’s History Month.
Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka, the first woman in the world to serve as a prime minister, died yesterday shortly after voting in Sri Lanka’s elections. She was 84.
Mrs. Bandaranaike’s final act was to vote in a parliamentary election she hoped would return the family’s party to power leading a governing coalition known as the People’s Alliance. Her death from a heart attack on Election Day seemed poetically timed for a woman whose family business is politics and whose political career spanned four decades.
Mrs. Bandaranaike rose to power in 1960 as a bereaved wife and mother of three, just a year after her husband, Solomon, then prime minister, was assassinated by a Buddhist monk. She quickly established herself as the undisputed leader of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party — founded by her husband — and a formidable politician in her own right.
She also became the matriarch of a political dynasty. In the final years of her life, her daughter, Chandrika Kumaratunga, succeeded her as the standard bearer of the family party and has served as president of the country since 1994. The father, mother and daughter have led Sri Lanka for 21 of the 52 years since it gained its independence from the British.
“Mrs. Bandaranaike’s legacy is this: After her husband died, there was so much confusion and the party was almost collapsing,” said K. M. de Silva, a Sri Lankan historian. “She was an untried leader. But she not only survived, she sustained the party and the family in politics.”
Her body was taken to her stately home on Rosemead Place in the Cinnamon Gardens section of Colombo, the capital. State radio canceled regular programs to play elegiac music and state television looked back on her life.
She will be buried alongside her husband on Saturday in a state funeral at the family’s ancestral home in Horagulla. Friday and Saturday have been declared days of national mourning. All liquor shops, bars, cinemas and slaughterhouses have been ordered to close.
“She was a heroic mother of the nation,” the Sri Lanka Freedom Party said in a statement.
But the Sri Lanka Freedom Party has come to stand for very different policies and values than it had in her day.
Mrs. Kumaratunga firmly repudiated her mother’s brand of Sinhalese nationalism, which had inflamed ethnic tensions between the mostly Buddhist Sinhalese majority and the predominantly Hindu Tamil minority. The daughter’s years in office have been dominated by her as-yet-fruitless efforts to end a 17-year-old war with separatist Tamil rebels. Mrs. Kumaratunga also steered the party toward a more open, market-oriented economy and away from the centralized, state-dominated socialism that had been her mother’s trademark.
Mrs. Bandaranaike was born Sirimavo Ratwatte on April 17, 1916, into one of the island nation’s wealthy feudal families, one that was at the pinnacle of Sri Lanka’s social hierarchy. In 1940 — 60 years ago today — she married S W. R D. Bandaranaike, the scion of an elite, feudal clan that had thrived for generations with the patronage of the British Empire.
Mr. Bandaranaike made the transition from his Anglicized, upper-class background to become a populist and a nationalist. And his wife carried forward his passions with even greater decisiveness and vigor, historians say. She was a shrewd political leader with a wide base in the Sinhalese majority.
In a recent interview, Anura, the Bandaranaike’s youngest child and only son, said their father had been the affectionate, demonstrative parent while their mother was aloof.
Mrs. Bandaranaike — known simply as Mrs. B — served twice as head of state, from 1960 to 1965 and again from 1970 to 1977. She nationalized many foreign and local enterprises and left Sri Lanka’s economy into one that was heavily state dominated.
She also zealously pursued efforts to make Sinhalese the sole national language, a stance that deeply alienated the country’s Tamil speakers. And she changed the university admissions policy to benefit the Sinhalese, disadvantaging the Tamils.
During five years of her daughter’s presidency, Mrs. Bandaranaike served as prime minister, which had become a largely ceremonial role under the Constitution adopted in 1978. Increasingly feeble and unable to speak clearly, she resigned as prime minister in August, though she retained her seat in Parliament.
She lived on Rosemead Place with her elder daughter, Sunethra, a philanthropist who is 57 and never got involved in politics.
But the political family she had nurtured splintered in her later years. Her son, Anura, 51, who lives next to his mother’s home in the family compound, went over to the family’s despised rival, the United National Party, after his sister, now 55, won the right to succeed their mother. But both the son, as a leader of the opposition, and the daughter, as president, have carried on the family’s political tradition.
To preserve archival articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.
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