Sirima Ratwatte Dias Bandaranaike (née Ratwatte; 17 April 1916 – 10 October 2000), commonly known as Sirimavo Bandaranaike, was a Sri Lankan stateswoman, politician and public official who thrice served as Prime Minister of Sri Lanka from 1960 to 1965, from 1970 to 1977, and from 1994 to 2000. A chairperson of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) from 1960 to 1994, she was the first woman in the world to be elected prime minister in 1960. She was the wife of S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike (the fourth Prime Minister of Ceylon), and the mother of Chandrika Kumaratunga, (the fifth President of Sri Lanka), Anura Bandaranaike (the 16th Speaker of the Parliament), and Sunethra Bandaranaike. Her cumulative tenure of 17 years and 211 days, makes her the longest-serving prime minister in Sri Lankan history.
Born into a Sinhalese Kandyan aristocratic family, Bandaranaike was educated in Anglican, 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. Her opponents dubbed her as the "Weeping Widow". As a result of her election victory, the British Press coined the term "stateswoman" as they could not use "statesman". 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, although it also oversaw land reform. 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 Chandrika Kumaratunga, 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.
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 Anglican 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 (S.W.R.D.) 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 (1943) and Chandrika (1945), 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.