At 44 years of age, Sirimavo Bandaranaike stepped out of her shy housewife persona to campaign for and eventually win her recently deceased husband’s seat as the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka. For 40 years, she held political dominance as the world’s first female PM, until her death by heart attack on the way home from voting in Sri Lanka’s general election. Her vote helped determine if her daughter could pull off a constitutional makeover that would end the 18-year civil war with the country’s Tamil minority. Like her husband, Bandaranaike gave her life, and inspired her family to give theirs, to politics.
Bandaranaike was born into a Kandyan aristocratic family. Despite being educated at Catholic schools in English, Bandaranaike retained her family’s heritage of being a practicing Buddhist, speaking Sinhala as well. She met and married the politician S.W.R.D Bandaranaike in 1940. Through his work, she increasingly became political and focused on social welfare. Her husband was voted in as Prime Minister in 1956, but was assassinated three years later by a Buddhist monk. Following his death, she felt compelled to save his Sri Lanka Freedom Party and was welcomed as the Party’s new leader.
In 1960, Bandaranaike led her Party to victory and subsequently became the Prime Minister. Regarded as a formidable politician, she served three terms. Between her second and third terms, the Sri Lankan parliament stripped her of her political rights, banning her from political office for seven years for alleged abuse of power during her term. She was pardoned by Pres. J. R. Jayawardene in 1986, and immediately made an unsuccessful attempt to run for President in 1988. Undeterred, she earned back her seat in parliament in 1989 and rose as the leader of the opposition.
Bandaranaike was also the matriarch of a political dynasty, with two of her three children becoming significant political figures in Sri Lanka. Whilst her son Anura favored right-wing ideals, her left-leaning daughter became her choice to lead the Party. Her daughter Chandrika, after a stint as Prime Minister, would go on to be the country’s first female president. After this historic coup, she appointed her mother Sirimavo to serve in what would be her final term as PM in this new government.
Although Bandaranaike is remembered as a female pioneer responsible for restoring her country as a republic after 150 years of British occupation, her legacy also lives on through the successful raising of an incredibly powerful family that has served as leaders for the majority of Sri Lanka’s independent history.