From a colonial official to prime ministers, a president and a parliamentary leader, the Bandaranaike family occupied changing positions close to the centre of power. Their history combines political inheritance with striking differences in outlook and ambition. How far did successive generations preserve the family legacy—and how far did they try to change it?
When S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike died on 26 September 1959, his political career ended after just three years as prime minister. Yet his assassination gave his name a new and enduring power.
His widow, Sirimavo, became the world’s first woman prime minister. Their daughter, Chandrika, became Sri Lanka’s first woman president. Their son, Anura, became opposition leader, Speaker and a cabinet minister.
But the family’s proximity to power had begun long before S.W.R.D. entered politics. His father had served the British colonial establishment that the son would later challenge.
Across three generations, the Bandaranaikes repeatedly adapted inherited influence to a changing country. A shared name provided continuity, but it did not produce a single political outlook.
Before S.W.R.D.: the colonial inheritance
S.W.R.D.’s father, Sir Solomon Dias Bandaranaike, held the office of Maha Mudaliyar, serving as a senior Ceylonese intermediary and adviser to the British governor. Knighted in 1907, he belonged to an elite whose status was closely connected to the colonial administration. en.wikisource.org
Sir Solomon brought up his son within an Anglican, English-speaking world and prepared him for a distinguished public career. S.W.R.D.’s education, culminating at Oxford, reflected those expectations. His later identification with Buddhism and Sinhala nationalism marked a striking departure from the political and cultural world his father represented. discovery.ucl.ac.uk
This gives the dynasty’s history an enduring irony. A family elevated through service to British rule produced a leader who mobilised resentment against the dominance of the anglicised elite. S.W.R.D. benefited from inherited privilege even as he challenged the order that had sustained it.
The question of preserving or rejecting a family legacy therefore began with S.W.R.D. himself. Before his widow and children had to decide what to carry forward from him, he had already confronted that choice about his father.
S.W.R.D.: a powerful but divided inheritance
S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike founded the Sri Lanka Freedom Party in 1951 after leaving the United National Party. His victory at the head of a coalition in 1956 challenged the established political order and brought Sinhala language, Buddhist identity and demands for social change to the centre of government.
An Oxford-educated member of the country’s privileged elite became the spokesman for people who felt excluded by an English-speaking establishment. His appeal combined cultural recognition, economic reform and the promise of a more independent national direction. www.tandfonline.com
For many Sinhala supporters, 1956 represented a long-awaited transfer of dignity and influence. For many Tamils, the Sinhala Only Act represented exclusion from the state.
Bandaranaike also attempted accommodation. His 1957 agreement with Tamil leader S.J.V. Chelvanayakam proposed regional arrangements and recognition of Tamil administrative needs. He abandoned the pact in 1958 under political and religious pressure. www.sundaytimes.lk
His successors therefore inherited competing possibilities: a politics of majority assertion and a recognition that the country needed compromise. Both could claim a connection to the founder.
Sirimavo: from political widow to national leader
Sirimavo Bandaranaike entered national political leadership after her husband’s assassination. In July 1960, she led the SLFP to victory and became the world’s first woman prime minister. She subsequently served three terms: 1960–65, 1970–77 and 1994–2000. sirimavobandaranaike.net
Her husband’s name helped make her rise possible. It gave a bereaved party a unifying figure and offered supporters a sense that his work would continue.
But political inheritance alone cannot explain four decades of leadership. Sirimavo held together a major party, managed difficult alliances and established an international identity of her own. Non-alignment became a defining feature of her foreign policy: a means of asserting the independence of a small country in a world dominated by rival powers. Her career extended far beyond the role of custodian of her husband’s memory. sirimavobandaranaike.net
At home, her governments pursued an expanded role for the state. The United Front administration elected in 1970 brought the SLFP into government with Marxist parties and advanced a programme of nationalisation and land reform. Its aim was to redistribute economic power and reduce inherited inequalities. countrystudies.us
Her leadership also exposed the limits of the promise of social transformation. The government confronted the JVP uprising in 1971 with military force. Economic difficulties and growing dissatisfaction eventually contributed to the SLFP’s overwhelming defeat in 1977. www.govinfo.gov
On the ethnic question, her administration largely reinforced the majority-centred state inherited from 1956. The 1972 constitution made the country a republic, gave Buddhism the foremost place and retained Sinhala as the sole official language. University admissions changes added to Tamil grievances, particularly among young people who believed their opportunities were being restricted. www.c-r.org
To supporters, Sirimavo defended national sovereignty and widened the reach of government. To critics, her governments strengthened central authority while failing to build a state in which minorities felt equally secure.
Her career also demonstrated remarkable endurance. Deprived of her civic rights and expelled from Parliament in 1980 following a commission’s findings of abuse of power, she nevertheless survived politically and eventually returned to office. sirimavobandaranaike.net
Chandrika: an attempt to change the inheritance
Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s rise depended partly on the family name. Her political outlook, however, was shaped by experiences that took her beyond it.
She studied in Paris and worked in land reform after returning to Sri Lanka. Her marriage to actor and politician Vijaya Kumaratunga connected her to a political project that sought a negotiated response to ethnic conflict. His assassination in 1988 brought another violent bereavement into the family’s public life. presidentcbk.lk
In 1994, Chandrika became prime minister and then president. She appointed her mother prime minister, creating an extraordinary arrangement in which a daughter held the presidency while her mother occupied the office both parents had previously held. Under the executive presidential system, however, the balance of power differed sharply from Sirimavo’s earlier premierships. 2009-2017.state.gov
Chandrika’s clearest departure from the family’s earlier governments concerned the ethnic conflict. She sought a settlement that acknowledged Tamil grievances and proposed substantial devolution of power. Her administration’s constitutional initiatives challenged the assumption that national unity required such extensive central control. www.icwa.in
This could be understood as an effort to recover the possibility of compromise glimpsed in her father’s pact with Chelvanayakam. It also required confronting consequences of policies associated with both her parents.
The results fell short of the ambition. Talks with the LTTE collapsed in 1995, and her government pursued military operations alongside constitutional reform. Proposed political accommodation developed while the war continued, weakening confidence in the possibility of a settlement. www.cepa.lk
Her constitutional proposals failed to secure the necessary parliamentary support. By the end of her presidency in 2005, neither a durable peace nor the intended constitutional settlement had been achieved. www.icwa.in
Chandrika therefore occupies an uneasy place in the dynasty’s history. She made a significant attempt to revise its approach to the national question, but she could not translate that change of outlook into a lasting settlement.
Anura: inheritance without succession
Anura Bandaranaike’s career reveals a different side of dynastic politics: the distance between being regarded as an heir and actually winning the highest office.
More conservative than his sister, he became closely associated with parliamentary politics and the struggle over the SLFP’s leadership. He served as opposition leader during the 1980s, but Chandrika’s return to the party and rapid ascent intensified the contest over the family’s political future.
In 1993, Anura crossed to the UNP—the party his father had left to establish the SLFP. The move reflected both political differences and a damaging struggle within the family over succession. www.ft.lk
His parliamentary career was substantial. First elected in 1977, he served for almost thirty years. He became Speaker in 2000–01 and held several ministerial portfolios, including foreign affairs and tourism. He never became prime minister or president. www.parliament.lk
Anura’s experience complicates any suggestion that the Bandaranaike name guaranteed power. It opened doors and sustained expectations. It could not settle rival ambitions or substitute for a successful route to national leadership.
A family name, several political legacies
The Bandaranaikes’ history traces a remarkable passage through different forms of power: colonial office, mass electoral mobilisation, parliamentary government and the executive presidency.
Sir Solomon’s standing rested on his position within the colonial establishment. His son built a movement by challenging the dominance of the elite to which the family belonged. Sirimavo turned political bereavement into an enduring leadership of her own. Chandrika sought to revise important elements of her parents’ political inheritance, while Anura struggled to secure its leadership.
Family continuity also had costs. When leadership became entangled with succession, disagreements within the household could become struggles over the direction of a national party.
Yet the dynasty was never politically uniform. Its members differed over economic policy, ethnic accommodation and the exercise of authority. Nor should the country’s history be reduced to their decisions. Other parties, Tamil political movements, the LTTE, international pressures and voters themselves shaped what each could accomplish.
The family’s enduring significance lies partly in the unresolved argument it carried from one generation to the next. Who belonged within the nation? How should power be shared? Could a movement built through majority mobilisation become the foundation of a state trusted by all its communities?
The future beyond the founder
In Till New Times Come, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike’s final hours become an occasion to consider the distance between political hopes and their consequences.
His family’s history gives that question another dimension. He had inherited wealth, status and expectations from a father who served the British colonial order. He transformed that inheritance into a very different kind of political authority.
His own death then left a party, a powerful name and competing commitments. His widow defended and developed them. His daughter tried to alter their direction. His son sought a place from which to lead.
Across the generations, inheritance provided an opportunity to exercise power. It never removed the need to choose what that power should serve.