Bandaranaike, Solomon West Ridgeway Diaz

(1899–1959), Sri Lankan political figure. In British times (since 1776), the Bandaranaikes and the Obeyesekeres were the two richest plantation families in Sri Lanka. Since Portuguese times (c. 1540–1656), this family of originally South Indian origin had occupied important offices and regularly adapted the catholic, protestant, and Anglican religions of the respective colonial rulers. Solomon Bandaranaike's father held the highest position reserved for a "native gentleman" in the British colonial administration, the office of head mudaliyar, which dominated and represented the totality of the Singhalese customary village and district office holders. Bandaranaike thus was well prepared to participate in Sri Lankan mass politics as it emerged in the early 1930s.

In 1936, he founded the Sinhala Maha Sabha, a radical pro-Singhalese organization that operated as a faction in the dominant Ceylon National Congress (CNC). When the CNC was transformed into the United National Party (UNP) in 1946, Bandaranaike feared he would be sidelined by the dominant party leaders and after independence (1948) he established in 1951 his own party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). From the beginning, the SLFP, which advocated an anti-imperialist, anti-minority, and pro-Singhalese program, attempted to mobilize voters that had not been reached by the UNP or that felt alienated by its pro-Western policy and attitudes. In 1956, an election year that coincided with the 2,500-year jubilee of the Buddha's enlightenment, Bandaranaike, under the slogan "Sinhala only," succeeded in integrating diverse Singhalese special interest and social groups in a de facto movement: the ad hoc party alliance, Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (MEP), was comprised of young, low-ranking socialist monks, poorly paid Singhalese school teachers, nurses, ayurvedic (or traditional Indian) doctors, and various classes of village office holders. Based on this network, the SLFP persuaded voters that "Sinhala only" meant the reestablishment of the political, economic, and cultural hegemony of the "Sinhala" people, the "lion race," in addition to the establishment of Sinhala as the exclusive language of state. The SLFP was unable immediately to fulfil these ambitions, and in 1959 Solomon Bandaranaike was shot by a disgruntled Buddhist monk. The participants in, and real motives of, the assassination were never discovered.

From 1959, Bandaranaike's widow, Sirimavo, the daughter of an influential aristocratic family, presided over the party, which won election victories in 1960 and 1970. After seventeen years of political harassment by the UNP, the SLFP, then represented by Sirimavo Bandaranaike, but in effect dominated and reformed by her daughter, Chandrika Kumaratunga, returned to power.

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