A. A. SUVOROV

Doctor of Philological Sciences

Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Keywords: Ceylon, Sri Lanka, Bandaranaike dynasty, women in power, Sinhalese-Tamil conflict

April 17, 2016 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Sirimavo Bandaranaike, who holds the primacy in everything related to women's political leadership in the 20th century. On July 21, 1960, Sirima Ratwatte Dias Bandaranaike was sworn in as Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon. On this day, a 44-year-old Ceylon widow made history as the world's first female Prime minister. In the new status, her name changed somewhat, and a suffix was added to it to express respect - from Sirima, she turned into Sirimavo, as the world has known her ever since.

Sirimavo served as Prime Minister three times: in 1960-1965, 1970-1977 and 1994-2000. In total, she has managed Sri Lanka for 18 years, as long as no one else has managed it before or since. In between serving as Prime Minister, she headed the opposition. At the age of 84, she, at that time the oldest serving prime minister in the world, voluntarily left her post and died two months after her resignation-on October 10, 2000. For forty years, she was a recognized matriarch, the founder of women's political leadership not only in Sri Lanka, but throughout South Asia.

Sirima was born on April 17, 1916 in southwestern Ceylon, near Ratnapura, famous for its precious stones, to a family of wealthy Sinhalese landowners Ratwatte. On the day of her birth, an event that was considered a good omen occurred: a herd of elephants broke into the kraal-a cattle pen belonging to the family. The astrologer who had been assigned the baby's horoscope informed Sirima's parents that she would become the future ruler of Ceylon, like the medieval Queen Lilavati ¹, which puzzled them a lot, since Ceylon was still a British colony at that time, and George V firmly occupied the place of the king. However, the astrologer was not mistaken, and eventually Sirimavo really became the ruler of Sri Lanka, although not crowned, but democratically elected.

Sirima was the eldest of six children in a family that practiced Theravada Buddhism, the most conservative and oldest surviving school of Buddhism. At the same time, as was customary among the local aristocracy, the girl was brought up and trained in the Catholic monastery of St. John the Baptist. Brigitte's in Colombo. Sirimavo did not receive any further education. At the age of 24, she was married to Solomon Bandaranaike, a member of another aristocratic Sinhalese family committed to Anglicanism. Only later, after starting a political career, Solomon returned to the bosom of Buddhism. Unlike his wife, he received a good British education at Christ Church College, Oxford University, was even elected secretary of the famous Oxford Union, and later became a certified lawyer.

In 1947, under the Ceylon Independence Act, the colony was declared a dominion and became part of the British Commonwealth of Nations. The Constitution of independent Ceylon was modeled on the English one. The nominal head of State remained the Governor-General, but executive power was vested in the Prime Minister and his Cabinet, responsible to the bicameral Parliament. The first Prime Minister was Don Stephen Senanayake, who managed to take into account the interests of different communities and rally their leading representatives, forming the United National Party( ONP). &

The article was written with the financial support of the Russian Foundation for Science, grant N 14 - 03 - 00014 "Heiresses of Asian Democracies: gender and Political Dynasties in South Asian countries".

the common ideological slogans were liberalism, secularism, individualism and support for private entrepreneurship.

From 1947 to 1950. Solomon Bandaranaike held ministerial positions in these three governments, representing the interests of the landowning elite. In 1951, he resigned from the Government and formed the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (PSSL). The party represented the Sinhalese majority, a Buddhist religion that had been the target of attacks and harassment by Sinhalese Catholic Christians and Tamil Hindus during the colonial era. In the 1956 elections, Bandaranaike's party won, and he, the fourth Prime Minister of independent Ceylon, was entrusted with the task of forming a coalition Government.

The new Government has implemented a number of fundamental reforms in line with its program. Sinhala has replaced English as the sole official language. The defensive alliance with Great Britain was broken, its naval and air bases in Ceylon were eliminated, and the country declared a policy of neutrality and non-alignment with the blocs. The Government actively supported Buddhist and Sinhalese cultural activities. However, the exclusive status of Sinhala caused opposition from the Tamils, who began to fight for the recognition of Tamil as the state language. This exacerbated inter-communal tensions and provoked mass riots ^{in 1958.2}

In this climate of political instability and social tension, in September 1959, Solomon Bandaranaike was assassinated in his Tintazhel residence in the capital by a Buddhist monk, Talduwe Somarama Thero, who was involved in a plot against the Prime Minister. In the morning, when Solomon saw a man in saffron monk's robes in his waiting room, he bowed respectfully before him, and then he shot the prime minister at point-blank range. The next day, Bandaranaike died in the hospital where he was taken, but before his death, in his address to the people, he asked the authorities to "spare this fool in monastic guise and not avenge him" ³.

During the 20 years that Solomon worked in the government, created his own party, led the opposition, and finally became Prime Minister, Sirimavo contented herself with the traditional role of wife, mother of three children, and hospitable hostess of the Prime minister's residence. The fact that she had no political ambitions is proved by her categorical, thrice-repeated refusal to lead the PSSL after the murder of her husband. However, an incident that intervened in the history of Sri Lanka, hidden political intrigues and revealed conspiracies made it change its mind.

ON THE ROAD TO POWER

After Solomon Bandaranaike, Charles Percival de Silva (1912-1972), who held one of the key cabinet posts, was considered the most important figure in the PSL. He was seen as the most likely successor to the Prime Minister. In August 1959, a month before Solomon's murder, C. P. de Silva was poisoned right at a cabinet meeting (he drank a glass of milk, which turned out to be poison). By all accounts, the poison was intended for the prime minister, and de Silva drank it accidentally.⁴ However, de Silva's condition was so bad that he was rushed to London for treatment, and he was forced to drop out of the power struggle that unfolded after Solomon's murder.

A possible attempt to poison the prime minister, who was actually killed a month later, negatively affected the reputation of the PSSL and forced its leaders to seriously think about changing the leadership of the party. With the party rapidly losing supporters, only a new "clean" leader, unconnected with internal party intrigues and the alleged plot against the former prime minister, could restore the party's electorate by appealing to the image of the tragically deceased Solomon Bandaranaike. Only his widow could do it better than anyone else. Therefore, members of the PSL leadership persuaded Sirimavo, without holding any party posts (which she categorically refused), to simply speak at rallies, telling about her late husband and his unfulfilled plans.

This decision radically changed the situation. Dressed in white mourning robes, the widow,

she seemed to be addressing each of her listeners personally. She didn't have much eloquence, but her simple emotionality more than made up for that shortcoming. Constantly punctuating her speech with tears, she told people what a wonderful person her "venerable husband" (Swami Purushaya) was, how he dreamed of helping the common people, and how brutally he was killed. Tens of thousands of people flocked to listen to her, including many ordinary rural women. They fully shared the widow's grief, wept and sobbed loudly with her, and at the same time imbued with the ideas of her deceased husband.

Of course, the opposition declared Sirimavo's speeches calculated manipulation of the electorate's emotions. Newspapers dubbed her the "Weeping Widow", ridiculed her and mocked her vulgar audience, "who can't hear or understand the words because of the loud sobs"⁵. But the wave of sympathy for the widow of the murdered prime minister gradually turned into a political campaign, and direct popular sympathies quickly took concrete outlines of political demands. In addition, PSSL made a short film about the family of the late prime minister, which was shown at rallies after the widow's speeches. Images of the peaceful life of an ideal Sinhalese family, where Solomon plays with his children while Sirimavo cooks and serves food, evoked a strong sense of emotional belonging and loss in viewers.⁶

The campaign focused on the "martyrdom" of Solomon Bandaranaike, which was one of the important components of the process of transferring charismatic power "by kinship". Now the "Crying Widow" has already appealed to the electorate to vote for her husband's party in the elections, so that his life's work can be continued by the "people's" government. This appeal was heeded, and Sirimavo was presented not only as the widow and mother of the "martyr's" children, but also as a continuation of his progressive policies, which alone could create "Our Government" (Apey Aanduwe) - this was one of the first nationalist slogans of the PSL. With Sirimavo as a symbol of renewal, the party was experiencing a real revival, and the" Weeping Widow " naturally took the place of the party leader.

The PSSL won the 1960 election by a narrow margin, and Sirimavo, who was neither a member of Parliament nor a senator at the time, was sworn in as Prime Minister. This event, which had elements of randomness, set a precedent that had significant implications at the regional and global levels. At the regional level, it marked the beginning of a "dynastic" transfer of power to widows and daughters. On a global level, it paved the way for women to rise to political power. It is said that it was after the victory of Sirimavo that British journalists invented the term stateswoman as the feminine gender of the familiar word statesman7.

THE TEST OF POWER

When Sirimavo took office as Prime Minister, she had no political experience or relevant education. During her lifetime, her husband did not involve her in his activities, assigning her the traditional role of a wife-mistress of the house. However, it turned out that widowhood gave her the strongest motivation - to preserve and continue her husband's achievements in order to perpetuate his memory. Therefore, the best thing she could do in this situation was to follow exactly Solomon's policy and try to implement his unfulfilled plans.

Solomon Bandaranaike's policy, and thus that of his widow, was based on socialist principles while maintaining state control over the economy, in contrast to the liberal economic policies advocated by the opposition, in particular-

ti, the main opponents from the ONP. In accordance with the new policy, the PSL government nationalized banks, ports, a number of industries, in particular, the tea shop, which brought the country a significant income, schools and other educational institutions owned by Catholics, and established a state monopoly on foreign trade.

Such a sharp start caused rejection of the West and criticism from the Western press: "In her first ten months as Prime Minister, Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike has created more problems than she has achieved. She intimidated foreign investors by threatening to nationalize oil companies, and also embarrassed foreign diplomats by her friendship with Communists and Trotskyists who supported her election. It caused consternation among the island's 800,000 Catholics by nationalizing their schools. And last week, she had to call in the army units to prevent a huge rise in the opposition wave. " ⁸

Following her late husband, Sirimavo continued to adhere to the non-Aligned movement in foreign policy and successfully participated in the resolution of the conflict on the India-China border in 1962. During his second term as Prime Minister, Bandaranaike's foreign policy took a further turn for the worse after the formation of the United Front, which included the Communist Party and the Trotskyist Sri Lanka Sama Samaya Party. At the same time, the Bandaranaike government significantly strengthened ties with the USSR and the PRC (although India remained the main political partner), and established diplomatic ties with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the DPRK.

Bandaranaike's undisputed success in foreign policy was her agreement with Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri (1964), which dealt with the fate of nearly 600,000 Indian Tamils who had long worked on tea plantations and other economic facilities in Ceylon. After independence, all of them found themselves without political status and citizenship and were subject to repatriation. Under the treaty called the Sirimavo-Shastri Pact, quotas were established under which these people had the right to obtain either Sri Lankan or Indian citizenship and, accordingly, to stay in Sri Lanka or move to India. ⁹

However, the biggest challenge for Sirimavo as Prime Minister was the inter-ethnic conflict between the Sinhalese majority (more than 70% of the population) and the Tamil minority (more than 11%). Because during the British rule, Tamils who professed Hinduism occupied leading positions in government and business,

The Sinhalese believed that the Tamils had usurped their ancestral rights by illegally enjoying greater privileges than they, the followers of Buddhism. This confidence caused resentment in Sinhalese people both for their ethnic group and for their religion, and a desire for revenge. Sinhalese nationalism was imbued with demands for "justice for the majority", ¹⁰ and when Solomon Bandaranaike passed the Sinhala Only Act through Parliament, which made Sinhala the sole state language, even displacing English as a means of inter-ethnic communication, this was met with massive support from Sinhalese and deep dissatisfaction from Tamils.

Sirimavo not only continued her husband's linguistic and ethnic policy, but also expanded its scope. Under her leadership, Sinhalese people gained advantages in everything: university admission, public service recruitment, and entrepreneurship. Nationalized sectors of the economy, even the teahouse, which had been dominated by Tamils for centuries, were placed under Sinhalese control. The number of seats held by Tamils in Parliament was reduced.

Government policies that discriminate against ethnic minorities have sparked a series of strikes in the traditionally Tamil north-east of the country. Bandaranaike's reaction was harsh and authoritarian: "She made a radio statement that' the nation should not be blackmailed with threats', announced the mobilization of the army, sent reinforced troops to Tamil areas. It imposed a state of emergency, under which strikers could be sentenced to five years in prison, and imposed curfews in major Tamil communities. It banned the Tamil Federal Party and jailed more than 70 of its leaders, including members of Parliament. " ¹¹ There were no serious repercussions from the Tamil protests, which were still a long way from a bloody civil war.

In 1962, Sirimavo managed to prevent, or rather outrun, a military coup called the "Coup of the Colonels", led by Catholic army officers. Operation Holdfast, codenamed Operation Holdfast, involved the sudden arrest of Sirimavo and her government in the course of a single night on January 27, 1962. The plotters intended to carry out a coup "without a single drop of blood", which certainly affected the putschists of the military coup in Pakistan in 1958, when General Ayoob Khan bloodlessly overthrew the government of Pakistan. President Iskander Mirza and became the head of the military regime ¹².

Sirimavo's own recollections of the coup have been preserved, to which reference should be made: "In January 1962. I was about to go to Kataragama when my confidants came to my Temple Trees residence in the evening and informed me that a group of army, navy, and police officers were going to overthrow the government. It would be unfair not to mention the important role played in these events by Felix Bandaranaike, my cabinet minister (and nephew. - A. S.). Without his help and quick reaction, the putschists could have succeeded, which would have put an end to democracy in Sri Lanka. < ... > We had only two hours left before the start of their operation. Before morning, all the leaders of the plot were arrested and taken to Temple Tree . Felix, along with the security officers, questioned them. As a result, it was decided to bring them to trial. All of them were brought before a special commission appointed by the then Chairman of the Supreme Court. Most of them were found guilty and sentenced to various prison terms with confiscation of property. " ¹³

The immediate result of the failed coup was Sirimavo's deep distrust of the army, which led to numerous personnel changes and disbanding of units in the army and navy. All this caused significant damage to the country's armed forces, from which they could not recover until the 1980s. So when the Janata Vimukti Peramuna rebellion broke out during Bandaranaike's second term as Prime Minister in 1971, the army was powerless to deal with it on its own, and Sirimavo had to seek international military assistance.

The policies directed against ethnic and religious minorities, as well as the alliance with communists and Trotskyists in the United Front, did not affect the reputation of Mrs. B., as she was now called in the country, for the better. The PSSL lost the 1965 election to the United National Party. Nevertheless, Sirimavo did not waste any time in vain: it managed to rally around itself all the "left" parties that did not compete with each other in the last elections. Having created, in this way-

zom, an opposition party alliance, Bandaranaike was able to regain the post of Prime Minister in the following 1970 elections.

THE FURTHER YOU GO, THE HARDER IT GETS

Just a year into her second term as prime minister, amid rising inflation and unemployment, Sirimavo is facing a more serious challenge than the failed Colonel's Coup. A revolt broke out in the country by young Sinhalese radicals who united in the National Liberation Front, the Janata Vimukti Peramuna revolt. The riot was brutally suppressed, but this did not add to Sirimavo's popularity. The government-controlled press tried to boost the Prime minister's declining popularity by printing photos of her either with Nehru or with Tito and other NAM leaders. In 1976, the Fifth Summit of the movement was held in Colombo with great fanfare, at which Bandaranaike was elected its Chairman.

Non-aligned countries supported her policy of continuing nationalization of foreign tea companies and land reform that limited the size of private land holdings. In the same years, it withdrew the last British military base and the American "Peace Corps" from the country, which led to a complete reduction in financial assistance from the United States and other Western countries. The severe consequences of the 1973 oil crisis forced the Government to temporarily introduce a card system for a number of products and everyday goods (sugar, cotton cloth, etc.) ¹⁴.

One of Bandaranaike's most important campaign promises was to convene a constitutional assembly and adopt a new republican constitution. On May 22, 1972, a new constitution was adopted, according to which Ceylon ceased to be a dominion and became an independent state within the Commonwealth of Nations - the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. The country was restored to its ancient name, which means "Blessed Island"in Sanskrit.

Even though Bandaranaike fulfilled her main campaign promise, it didn't save her or her party. According to the Constitution, the next parliamentary elections were supposed to be held in 1975. Sirimavo postponed them for another two years. And in 1977, it suffered a crushing defeat: the PSSL won only 8 seats in parliament out of 168. But at the time, Sirimavo had no idea that the worst days of her political career were yet to come. The new ONP Government, led by Junius Jayawardene, soon to become President, established a presidential commission to investigate charges of constitutional violation and abuse of power brought against Sirimavo Bandaranaike. She was also reminded of the unconstitutional postponement of the election.

Bandaranaike refused to attend the commission's hearings, considering all the charges against her banal revenge of old political opponents. However, in 1980, after the Supreme Court found Bandaranaike guilty of abuse, she was deprived of her parliamentary mandate and the right to engage in political activities for seven years. One can only imagine how insulting and humiliating such an act of ostracism was for a woman who for two decades was considered a symbol of her country.

Sirimavo was allowed to return to politics in 1986, when she received an official "pardon" from President Jayawardene. By that time, Sri Lanka had been in a three-year war between the Tamils, who were demanding the creation of their own independent state in the north of the island, and the federal government. Relations between the main ethnic groups have always been tense, often resulting in interethnic clashes. In the early 1980s, the Tamil Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), led by Vellupillai Prabhakaran (1954-2009), began operating in the northern regions of the country.

Since then, more than 65,000 people have been killed in the Sinhalese-Tamil ethnic conflict, and hundreds of thousands have been forced to flee their homes. In 1991, Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by Tamil terrorists (in revenge for sending Indian troops to the island to help Sri Lankan government forces), and in 1993, Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa was killed.

Despite the ongoing war in the country, presidential elections were held in 1988, in which Sirimavo, who had returned to the political forefront, took part as a candidate of the PSSL. She did not feel responsible for what was happening in Sri Lanka and blamed President Jayawardene for rampant terrorism, inflation and pervasive corruption.

I told him to his face during the election debate. However, she lost the election to Ranasingha Premadasa, who was later killed by Tamil militants. The parliamentary elections of 1989, which were held in an atmosphere of real terror, ended just as badly for her. Sirimavo was forced to flee an election rally in Colombo when three bombs exploded in the crowd. It looked like Mrs. B.'s time for political success was up.¹⁵

The support came from where a mother of three can expect it - from her daughter Chandrika.

UNDER THE CURTAIN

While Sirimavo suffered one defeat after another, her children grew into significant political figures. The son of Anur was elected as a member of Parliament from the PSL party and hoped to eventually replace his mother as its chairman. However, Sirimavo preferred to hand over the party leadership to her daughter Chandrika, who gained great popularity and broad support of the electorate after the murder of her husband, the famous film actor Vijaya Kumaratung, in 1988. The son of Anur, annoyed by the "unfair", from the patriarchal point of view, choice of his mother, left the PSL and moved to the rival ONP, which the mother and daughter perceived as a betrayal of family traditions.

In August 1994, after an unprecedented dirty election campaign marked by political assassinations, intimidation and blackmail of competitors, the party alliance led by the PSSL finally won, and Chandrika took the post of Prime Minister. Sirimavo retreated into the shadows to give her daughter a chance to run in the presidential election. Chandrika was a grateful daughter: when she became the fifth President of Sri Lanka in November of that year, one of her first decrees was to appoint her 78-year-old mother as Prime Minister. So, in her declining years, Sirimavo Bandaranaike headed the government for the third time.

During her third premiership, Sirimavo no longer played a leading political role, being overshadowed by the authority of her daughter-president. Previously unyielding and firm, Bandaranaike began to listen to the opinions of numerous advisers from the "left" parties. Thus, "she accepted the program of her" left"allies to nationalize plantations and build a state-owned industrial sector" ¹⁶. Chandrika, due to her age and education at the Sorbonne, was guided by the policies of developed Western countries and did not share her mother's "left" beliefs, so their relations at the" official " political level should not be discussed. it was almost cloudless.

Bandaranaike retired in August 2000. At 84, the oldest female politician in the world, she lost the post to her party member Ratnasiri Wickremanayaka. On October 10, she left the house for the last time, already in a wheelchair, to take part in the next parliamentary elections. She died of a heart attack a few minutes after putting her ballot in the ballot box.

^{Silva Neluka.} 1 The Gendered Nation. Contemporary Writings from South Asia. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2004, p. 179.

^{Richardson John.} 2 Paradise Poisoned. Learning about Conflict, Terrorism and Development from Sri Lanka's Civil Wars. Kandy: The International Centre for Ethnic Studies, 2005, p. 95 - 97.

³ SWRD Bandaranaike Museum - http://www.swrdbandaranaike.lk/

^{Alawi Mowlana.} 4 Golden memories of a political prodigy // Daily News, September 21, 2001.

^{Bhagat Rashida.} 5 A Gender Paradox in Sri Lanka // The Hindu Business Line, August 26, 2005.

^{Mukerji K.P.} 6 Madame Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike. Colombo: Gunasena, 1960, p. 98.

⁷ Sirimavo Bandaranaike. Obituary // The Economist, October 19, 2000.

⁸ Ceylon: Sinhala without Tears // Time, May 05, 1961.

^{Kanapathipillai Valli.} 9 Citizenship and Statelessness in Sri Lanka: The Case of the Tamil Estate Workers. Delhi: Anthem Press, 2009, p. 192.

¹⁰ Sri Lanka: Sinhala Nationalism and the Elusive Southern Consensus, p. 3 - http://www.refworld.org/pdfidM732c78b2.pdf

^{Ganagarajah Ruth.} 11 Breaking the Glass Ceiling? The Paradox of Female Leadership in Sri Lanka, p. 5 -http://www.personal.psu.edu/cpl2/blogs/powerforce/Canagaraiah%20on%20Sri%20Lanka.p df

^{Jeyaraj D.B.S.} 12 "Operation Holdfast": The attempted coup d'etat of Jan 1962 - http://dbsjeyaraj.com/dbsj/archives/1250

¹³ Memoirs of Sirima R.D. Bandaranaike. Quelling the 1962 coup: Braved it all to save democracy // Sunday Observer, April 03, 2005.

¹⁴ Sirimavo Bandaranaike. Obituary // The Telegraph, October 11,2000.

^{Skard Torild.} 15 Sirimavo Bandaranaike. Women of Power, Half a century of female presidents and prime ministers. Bristol: Policy Press, 2014, p. 201.

^{Jayatilaka Tissa} 16 (ed). Sirimavo: Honoring the World's First Woman Prime-Minister. Colombo: The Bandaranaike Museum Committee, 2010, p. 243.

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