Sirimavo Bandaranaike (born April 17, 1916, Ratnapura, Ceylon [now Sri Lanka]—died October 10, 2000, Colombo, Sri Lanka) was a stateswoman who, upon her party’s victory in the 1960 general election in Ceylon (later Sri Lanka), became the world’s first woman prime minister. She left office in 1965 but returned to serve two more terms (1970–77, 1994–2000) as prime minister. The family she founded with her husband, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, rose to great prominence in Sri Lankan politics.
Born into a wealthy family, she married the politician S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike in 1940 and began to interest herself in social welfare. After her husband, who became prime minister in 1956, was assassinated in 1959, she was induced by his Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) to become the party’s leader. The SLFP won a decisive victory at the general election in July 1960, and she became prime minister.
Bandaranaike carried on her husband’s program of socialist economic policies, neutrality in international relations, and the active encouragement of the Buddhist religion and of the Sinhalese language and culture. Her government nationalized various economic enterprises and enforced a law making Sinhalese the sole official language. By 1964 a deepening economic crisis and the SLFP’s coalition with the Marxist Lanka Sama Samaja Party (“Ceylon Socialist Party”) had eroded popular support for her government, which was resoundingly defeated in the general election of 1965.
In 1970, however, her socialist coalition, the United Front, regained power, and, as prime minister, Bandaranaike pursued more-radical policies. Her government further restricted free enterprise, nationalized industries, carried out land reforms, and promulgated a new constitution that created an executive presidency and made Ceylon into a republic named Sri Lanka. While reducing inequalities of wealth, Bandaranaike’s socialist policies had once again caused economic stagnation, and her government’s support of Buddhism and the Sinhalese language had helped alienate the country’s large Tamil minority. The failure to deal with ethnic rivalries and economic distress led, in the election of July 1977, to the SLFP’s retaining only 8 of the 168 seats in the National Assembly, and Bandaranaike was replaced as prime minister.
In 1980 the Sri Lanka parliament stripped Bandaranaike of her political rights and barred her from political office, but in 1986 Pres. J.R. Jayawardene granted her a pardon that restored her rights. She ran unsuccessfully as the SLFP’s candidate for president in 1988, and after regaining a seat in parliament in 1989 she became the leader of the opposition.
Bandaranaike’s children, in the meantime, had become major political figures within the SLFP. Her son, Anura P.S.D. Bandaranaike, was first elected to parliament in 1977 and had become the leader of the SLFP’s right-wing faction by 1984. He was frustrated in his bid to become the party’s leader, however, by his sister Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, who held left-wing views and was favoured by their mother for the leadership. In response, Anura defected from the SLFP and joined the rival United National Party (UNP) in 1993.
Chandrika had been active in the SLFP before marrying the film actor Vijaya Kumaratunga in 1978, and after his assassination in 1988 she rejoined her mother’s party. She soon came to head its left-wing faction, and a string of electoral victories propelled her to the leadership of an SLFP-based coalition that won the parliamentary elections of August 1994. Chandrika became prime minister, and in November of that year she won the presidential election over the UNP candidate, becoming the country’s first female president. Chandrika appointed her mother, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, to serve as prime minister in her new government, which mounted a major military campaign against Tamil separatists in 1995. Failing health forced Sirimavo to resign her post in August 2000. Shortly after voting in the October parliamentary elections, she suffered a heart attack and died. Chandrika, barred from seeking a third term, left office in 2005.