On this day in 1960, Ceylon chose the world’s first woman prime minister. Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party won 75 out of 150 seats in the general election
‘Weeping widow’
Sirimavo entered politics only after her husband, former prime minister S W R D Bandaranaike was shot dead by an extremist Buddhist in 1959. During the campaign she would frequently burst into tears and became known as the “weeping widow”.
‘Kitchen, kitchen’
Sirimavo’s husband never encouraged her to be involved in politics, according to D B S Jeyaraj, a Canadian journalist of Sri Lankan origin. According to an anecdote, when SWRD was talking politics with a few ministers, Sirimavo surprised the men by participating in the discussion. Suddenly, her “enraged husband shouted at her to stop saying ‘Sirima Kusiya, Kusiya” (Sirima, kitchen, kitchen)
Sirimavo and Tamils
She served as PM during 1960-65, then in 1970-77 and 1994-2000. During her first term, she declared a state of emergency after a prolonged civil disobedience campaign by the Tamils. They were angered as she replaced English with Sinhala as the official national language
Sirimavo’s handling of the Tamil national question left much to be desired … In the 1970s, her government introduced policies that deprived deserving Tamil students of tertiary education, writes Jeyaraj in Sri Lanka’s Daily Mirror
Plantation workers from India
One of her most famous accomplishments was her resolving the statelessness issue of the plantation workers of Indian origin. She signed an accord with PM Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1964. The Sirima-Shastri Pact was hailed as a diplomatic breakthrough. In 1974, she again signed an accord with PM Indira Gandhi to absorb the remaining Plantation Tamils