Sirimavo — supreme woman politician of the last century

by Prof. W. A. Wiswa Warnapala

Nearly four decades ago, Sri Lanka, an amergent independent State, experienced the second important political assassination in South Asia, and it was in the aftermath of this tragic event that Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike decided to enter the arena of politics in this country. Since 1960, with remarkable ability and extraordinary political enthusiasm, she bestrode the political landscape of Sri Lanka for more than four decades, within which period, despite the number of challenges she faced with both political capacity and quality leadership hitherto unknown in Sri Lanka, she laid the foundation for Sri Lanka to emerge as a modern nation. It is my view that in paying a tribute to Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike who pioneered many a role as the most leading woman politician of the last century, one must recount some of her mayor achievements in the fields of both national and international politics. All her pioneering contributions in the field of politics during the last four decades cannot be assessed in a newspaper article. Therefore it would be useful to focus our attention on certain relevant issues which are of current importance in the given political scenario, the mayor element of which is the emerging threat to the foundations of national sovereignty in this country over which her outstanding and illustrious political personality pervaded as a political colossus.

Sri Lanka Freedom Party, which in 1960 was less than ten years old, became leaderless due to the assassination of the late S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, and this vacuum in the leadership of the party, which then displayed tremendous ability to come back to power, had to be filled immediately in order to exploit and utilise the upsurge of popular sympathy which became the major element of the aftermath of the assassination. It was a political resource which could be exploited by an enterprising political leadership. Yet another noticeable factor in the scenario was the absence of an acceptable alternative national leadership within the party which then was not a properly organised and structured as a political party. In other words, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party did not possess all the characteristics of a modern political party, and the crisis which it experienced in 1959-60 period could be attributed to this feature of the party and it was an inevitability in that particular context. It was with the advent of Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike as its leader and the legitimacy which she derived from the charisma of Bandaranaike which influenced the construction of a solid base for the Sri Lanka Freedom Party.

In the sixties, several political organisations and groups emerged in association with certain individuals who were close associates of Bandaranaike and they tried hard to derive legitimacy from he’s base to form political parties which surfaced at the 1960 March parliamentary election. It was Mrs. Bandaranaike who made full use of SWRD’s popular base to solidify the Sri Lanka Freedom Party into a fully structured political party capable of enthusing the people for articulated political action and change. The progressive package of policies, which SWRD developed and articulated in his early political career from 1926 onwards, needed to be converted into an implementable package of policies and it was to this onerous task to which Sirimavo provided effective and responsible leadership during her illustrious political career. Though she entered the legislature with some reluctance and hesitance, she knew that she would inherit SWRD’s mantle as well as the incomplete process of political change which came to be disrupted as a result of the assassination. Therefore, Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike gave first priority to continue the policies of her late husband whose package of policies, which included the progressive gains of 1956, became the main agenda of the party. She, though deviated from certain policy standpoints in response to national and international impulses, remained totally committed to those policies, and their implementation in association with other social and political forces, became the main policy posture of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party and the governments to which it provided leadership in the sixties and seventies.

It was Mrs. Bandaranaike, with her extraordinary committment to her late husband’s policies, who made Bandaranaike a legendary political figure in the political history of Sri Lanka. Bandaranaike became a charismatic leader as well as a legendary political figure because of the fact that his policies, most of which addressed the grievances of the common man, were implemented as an integral aspect of democratic socialism, the main content of which was the progressive social and economic change with an emphasis on expanded social justice and economic and social equality. Martin Wickremasinghe, referring to one aspect of change, wrote that the late Prime Minister Bandaranaike, gifted with vision and insight, saw the evil influence on our political independence of this culturally demoralised society and bureaucracy. He pursued new policies and reforms and invented new concepts to cure the disease of uprootedness of this powerful westernised minority society. He, writing further, stated that ‘when he realised the danger which was growing as a result of the collusion of the westernised minority with foreign vested interests, he tried to seek the help of the mayor socialist political parties’. It was left to Mrs. Bandaranaike to complete the mission which she did during her career. Bandaranaike initiated the process of change with the nationalisation of the Port and Omnibus Transport in the country and the responsibility in carrying it forward, in keeping with social and economic aspirations of the masses, fell on Mrs. Bandaranaike who, through two regimes which collaborated with the left wing political parties, accelerated the process of political and economic development in the country. Major enterprises, which assumed the character of commanding heights of the economy, came to be nationalised despite the opposition from both local and foreign reactionary forces. Since nationalisation became a major issue during the regimes of Sirimavo Bandaranaike, a brief examination as it became an important element of the SLFP economic policy which aimed at the construction of a sustainable mixed economy.

Both SWRD and Sirimavo, unconsciously, derived inspiration from the standpoint expounded by Keir Hardie, Labourite MP, who in his work From Serfdom to Socialism expressed a viewpoint in relation to nationalisation which was similar to the policies followed by the Bandaranaike regimes in the sixties and seventies. From Serfdom to Socialism became the famous text for the Labour Party, and it was Keir Hardie who wrote that our socialism included the nationalisation of the land and the means of producing and distributing wealth, and the organisation of industry as a civic service under public ownership and control for the benefit of all, instead of as now under private ownership and control for private profit. Mrs. Bandaranaike, in her valiant attempt to take forward the historical gains of 1956, believed that without an extension of public ownership which redresses wealth within the nation that the country can never be able to change to guarantee both social justice and economic equality. Nationalisation thus became an instrument of State intervention in economic development in a mixed economy with a recognised private sector.

Therefore in the period 1960-64 and 1970-77, Sirimavo Governments took great strides in extending public ownership, and the UNP, in their 1965 Manifesto, openly declared that they would not denationalise those public enterprises which were nationalised in the preceding period. Industries which are vital to the economic well being of the nation should be controlled by and run in the interests of the country as a whole. Sirimavo was no ideologue or a theroritician; she was a very practical politician with immense sympathy for the ordinary man, and possessed remarkable ‘political horse sense’ in understanding the issues benefiting the people. She, therefore with implicit practical political acumen, set out three criteria to justify public ownership; it eliminated the opportunity for profiteering; secondly that it introduced new challenges to develop and extend democratic control as an vital element of democratic socialism and thirdly, central to the whole question of nationalisation, that it distributed capital gains throughout the nation instead of them being used to make the rich richer. Nationalisation programme, though invited both local and foreign opposition, was spearheaded with courage and determination as she was able to display quality leadership in the effort. Economic needs and social needs of the country demanded such changes in the area of economic development, and the take-over of foreign owned plantations was seen as an attempt to do justice to a dispossessed and exploited peasantry which had become a landless proletariat due to the land and plantation policies of the imperialists. Mrs. Bandaranaike had a personal interest in the rehabilitation of the dispossessed Kandyan peasantry whose resuscitation demanded policies with a nationalist tinge.

Sirimavo, as her statements made in 1960 amply demonstrated, saw her entire political mission, as an attempt to carry forward the social and political changes of 1956 with a view to completing the process of political independence which SWRD initiated with the take over of the foreign bases in Katunayake and Trincomalee. To make political independence more meaningful, constitutional changes were necessary, and it was her regime in 1970 which took the step to enact the first autochthonous Constitution in Sri Lanka which, as anticipated by many a nationalist in the country, introduced the concept of unitarism as a safeguard against organised attempts to befurcate the country. The 1972 Constitution was enacted by a Constituent Assembly and there was a long process of discussion and public debate on all aspects of the Constitution. In addition, making of the Constitution was made a part of the democratic tradition, and it, though contained certain questionable features, was not as bad as the 1978 Constitution which has made the country ungovernable in a variety of ways. It was Sirimavo who chaired the special committee of the Constituent Assembly which went into the sovereignty of the State, and this was done primarily to see that the concept of unitarism is incorporated in the new Constitution. She, therefore, remained committed to the concept of a unitary State and she, throughout her career, never agreed to deviate from that position, and it was this conviction which compelled her to campaign against the enactment of the 13th amendment which interfered with the unitarist features of the Sri Lankan State. Before the enactment of the 13th amendment in 1987, there was an All Party Conference in June, 1986 to which the then Government placed a set of proposals. Mrs. Bandaranaike, in her capacity as the leader of the SLFP, responded with a long statement in which she rightly observed that the attempt of the Government was to make use of the Constitution to introduce a federal structure of government in the country. She stated that the Constitution has been formulated in such a way so as to see that its unitary character is protected. She, with an exhaustive examination of the issues highlighted in the Government proposals which finally culminated in the enactment of the 13th amendment’ asked the question - What can be the rationale behind this effort to federalise a unitary State? It was her view that sovereignty should not be fragmented in the interest of achieving greater national unity; her prophetic statements and views, in my view, are still valid in the current scenario where there is a veiled attempt to bifurcate the country in the name of an elusive package of peace. It was in this instance, as in the case of the take over of petroleum interests in the country, Sirimavo displayed her patriotism and belief in the territorial integrity of the country. Adoption of this policy standpoint was based on the fact that Mrs. Bandaranaike, as the leader who provided active and responsible leadership to the SLFP for over 41 years, remained totally committed to the powerful historical foundations of the SLFP, and she, during the tenure of her responsible leadership, was not prepared to allow the historical foundations of her party to wither away owing to the influences of outmoded ideologies. A quotation from Harold Wilson would help me to prove my thesis on this matter. Harold Wilson, the former Prime Minister of Britain once told his left wingers that he does not take political guidelines from the Highgate Cemetry where Karl Marx had been buried. In the handling of political coalitions, Mrs. Sirimavo relied on the practicalities and realities of the situation.

No leader in independent Sri Lanka has played such an astounding role in the arena of foreign policy as Mrs. Bandaranaike who, in the course of her stewardship of the foreign policy of the island State of Sri Lanka, displayed immense diplomatic skills National interest was at the very heart of her foreign policy which came to be based on the foreign policy perceptions which SWRD enunciated from the very inception of his career as a politician. In this con - text as well, it was Mrs. Bandaranaike who completed the process by taking Sri Lanka to the international stage under then existing world order, where the country, under her astute leadership played an important role in voicing the concerns of small states. Neutralism, which SWRD championed before the emergence of the Bandung philosophy of international relations, was converted into a form of radical non alignment by Mrs. Bandaranaike who, during the hay day of the non-aligned movement, became one of its main live wires. It was during this period that the movement, while championing political causes to change the face of the world, began to show an interest in economic cooperation, through which an attempt was made to help the nations to achieve economic independence. The fifth non-aligned Summit which was held in Colombo, was a landmark in the non-aligned movement and it opened the door for the construction of a new political order, the chief feature of which was the place of the small nation in the international arena. With the emergence of small nations as important actors in the international arena, the big nations, with their military might and nuclear superiority, could not bully them to toe their line on international issues. Yet another important element in her foreign policy posture was the special relationship with India, and it was because of this policy that she was able to resolve a number of contentious issues with India. SLFP continues to recognise this aspect as a vital component of our foreign policy; the traditional friendship with India is a vital consideration which no Government can afford to ignore and this demands reciprocal responses as well. Though a new Ministry of Foreign Affairs was created by the UNP Government, the blueprint for its creation was made during the time of Mrs. Bandaranaike who never thought of converting it into an employment agency for cronies and cheap uneducated party catchers.

During the period of her illustrious political career, Mrs. Bandaranaike had to face a number of challenges which she overcame with a remarkable display of quality leadership. Her opponents wanted to destroy her formidable politics personality by initiating a process of vindictive political which culminated in the removal of her civic rights, by which the perpertrators of vindictive politics, thought that she could be politically de-stabilised and thereby destroy the leadership of the SLFP. The instrument of political slabder was in full use to tarnish her image. However, she, displaying her remarkable tenacity and her committment remained active in politics till she was able to become the Prime Minister of this country for the third time. It came along with a historical political change. The removal of her civic rights by a popularly elected legislature dominated by a set of politician specialising in political revenge was a monumental historical mistake, the impact of which penetrated the body politic of the period, resulting continuous instability and lawlessness. It was with this decision that political revenge came to be legalised through legislative action, and it, though public opinion forced them to rectify it after sometime, marred the democratic politics of the country and changed the course of politics in the country. As a woman leader who pioneered gender politics in this part of the world and awakened many a woman for meaningful political action, Mrs. Bandaranaike maintained her high political profile as the most leading woman politician whose political career provided some important guidelines even to Mrs. Hilary Clinton before she launched to enter the US Senate. This is sufficient an example to show that Mrs. Bandaranaike enjoyed a global reputation as a supreme political personality whose emergence was a landmark in the modern day gender politics in the world.