From kitchen to the world stage

Coming across as a curious mix of Margaret Thatcher and Barbara Bush, Mrs B as the premier was fondly known, walked the international stage with the handbag as a fashion accessory, while insisting on addressing the world in September 1961 at the Neutral Summit Talks in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, “as a woman and a mother”.

Nearly 40 years on, it is as a mother that her nation misses her, not so much the stateswoman. In the words of Alavi Mowlana, Sri Lankan minister for local affairs: “I think the entire nation has lost its mother. I cannot believe that she is no more.”

On October 10, when she died at 84, it was Bandaranaike’s 60th wedding anniversary. After all, it was her marriage to the Oxford-educated Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike, a minister in the colonial government, in 1940 that had made her first famous in the country of her birth. It was his death in 1959 at the hands of a Buddhist monk that made her the world’s first prime minister. Politics was not a career choice. It was thrust on her, but a shy housewife as Bandaranaike was, she did not cower away from power. She is the only Sri Lankan prime minister to have ruled for three terms.

Through the next four decades, Sri Lankan politics was never to be mentioned without her name. She lived it, coveted it, some would say, even misused it. The Tamils would certainly argue that. She was instrumental in making Sinhala the only official language, in place of English. In 1972, in a new republican constitution, she changed Ceylon’s name to Sri Lanka and made Buddhism the State religion — to the disappointment and annoyance of the Hindu Tamils.

There were other moves too and not all were controversial, though some have been reversed since Bandaranaike first came to power, by her daughter mostly. Bandaranaike became the founder member of the emerging Non-Aligned Movement. She nationalised foreign oil companies and all government business was transferred from foreign banks to the State-owned Bank of Ceylon and the new People’s Bank, bringing an end to US aid. Soviet aid was sought for industrialisation projects and education was reformed in favour of the Buddhist Sinhalese.

Born Sirimavo Ratwatte on April 17, 1916, Bandaranaike was a member of one of the island’s wealthiest families, but remained a socialist to her last.

Bandaranaike stood down in August this year to let her daughter, Chandrika Kumaratunga, appoint a hardliner in a bid to boost the government’s 17-year fight against Tamil separatists ahead of the elections.

It was on the issue of the separatist movement that Mrs B first lost her love for her northern neighbour. In 1987, when India sent in troops to impose a peace settlement, Bandaranaike, once India’s greatest ally on the island, hotly opposed the intervention. To little effect.

Bandaranaike wrote as she ended a 40-year political career: “I believe it is time for me to quietly withdraw from the humdrum of busy political life, to a more tranquil and quiet environment.” If it was quiet she was looking for, clearly, Sri Lanka was not the place for her. Perhaps, where she is now.