Who was Sirimavo?
Anomaa Rajakaruna
The private life of a very public figure!
Who actually was Sirimavo Ratwatte Dias Bandaranaike, the world’s first female head of government in modern history?
Propelled into the Prime Minister’s chair in very much a man’s world after the traumatic assassination of husband S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike in 1959 and the longest serving PM (1960-1965, 1970-1977 and 1994-2000), this week comes, a new documentary – a no holds barred look at her life, from those closest to her. During her final stint as PM, Sirimavo served under daughter Chandrika who was the Executive President.
As I watch ‘Our Mother, Grandmother, Prime Minister: SIRIMAVO’ screened to a select audience on Monday at the National Film Corporation cinema in Colombo, tiny but important nuggets from the film grab the attention.
A glimpse of her private life: Sirimavo with children, Sunethra, Chandrika and Anura and below from her public life: Sirimavo with Indian Premier Indira Gandhi, Anura and Sunethra. Our cover pic shows Sirimavo at the unveiling of SWRD’s statue at Galle Face
The tale as told by her two daughters Sunethra and Chandrika; grandchildren Yasodhara and Vimukthi and two former officials Dharmasiri Peiris (former Secretary to the PM) and Nihal Jayawickrama (former Permanent Secretary, Justice Ministry), has been captured on camera by well-known researcher and Director, Anomaa Rajakaruna, and her crew.
“We always talk about Sirimavo, but we don’t know much about her. She is on a pedestal, but who was she,” was what Anomaa wished to bring under the spotlight when she began researching Sirimavo’s life back in 2015, intending to produce the film for her birth centenary on April 18, 2016.
Amma to Sunethra and Chandrika and Athamma to Yasodhara and Vimukthi, this is the first time that the grandchildren have gone on record talking about her……..“I wanted the different views, the memories and recall of people who may have been in the same room with Sirimavo but saw her differently, like what you see between the narratives of the two daughters,” says Anomaa.
The candid banter between them highlights just that – the favoured elder daughter and the favoured younger son who is no more and in-between the other daughter who sometimes “felt” like “the ugly duckling”, until Amma decided to hand over the baton of politics to her.
It was no easy task at the onset though for Anomaa to crack the ice and extricate what each one nearest and dearest to Sirimavo felt about her. The easier pathway would have been to collect the information and do the narrative but she did not want that.
Memories of Athamma: Vimukthi and Yasodhara
It worked when she had the two sisters Sunethra and Chandrika together at Horagolla. Yasodhara too shared her memories of Athamma when she came back home on holiday while Vimukthi did so in England. Anomaa showed her “work in progress” in 2016 as a test run and kept going even though finding footage of this public persona was very difficult, most of it having been lost to time and destroyed.
With the thinking that Sirimavo was the only ‘man’ in the then Cabinet, the title has also been given a slight twist with the ‘Sir’ in ‘Sirimavo’ being highlighted.
The film captures touching and tender moments hitherto unseen by the public eye………the person not overly dramatic, calm in many an upheaval yet crying her heart out over her husband’s untimely death; the grandmother one couldn’t really cuddle or jump into bed with, yet making little ducks to sneak eggs into the diet of fussy-eater Vimukthi; the home baker having her own little baking corner with a Baby Belling at the family’s Rosmead Place residence and more.
Memories of Amma: Candid banter between sisters Sunethra and Chandrika
The documentary is also a look at past times when marriages were based on two powerful horoscopes; when S.W.R.D., 17 years older, saw her as the hostess when he went to Barnes Ratwatte’s home in Balangoda for lunch. The marriage had its ups and downs but was a strong and respectful one.
All the very personal moments are there – the joy of the long-awaited birth at home of a son and S.W.R.D. who was in Anuradhapura declaring open the New Town, rushing back to see the newborn and naming him Anura after the ancient city.
The sorrow foisted on a young family, by the first political assassination in the country not by terrorists but a Buddhist monk, in their very home in September 1959. Seeing with their sensitive eyes not only the pools of blood in their home and Amma weeping at the hospital, the children not able to hug her. A nation in mourning and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) in disarray.
A young widow, having heard about the mummification of bodies including that of Stalin in the Soviet Union insisting that it was what she wanted for her husband and herself maybe to remain together even after death, being persuaded that it was not the thing to be done.
The child Chandrika, eavesdropper to all adult conversations even before, being approached by Felix Dias Bandaranaike with pipe and all, to persuade Amma who was questioning what would happen to her children to continue with the vision of S.W.R.D. Amma retreating to the shrine room and seeking guidance not only from Buddha but maybe also from her husband.
Key officials Dharmasiri and Nihal also reflect on some of the major political decisions made during her time – where Sirimavo succeeded but was hamstrung by her political partners at others like the time she did not want a language preference to be included in the Constitution of the 1970s.
The ‘first’ woman PM in 1960, all in white still mourning her husband and the ‘second’ more mature PM who had come to her own as if there had been a baptism of fire.
Seen and unseen facets of Sirimavo’s life all compressed into 77 minutes from reams of footage by Anomaa’s skilled core team which included Editor Saman Alvitigala; Camerapersons Kularuwan Gamage, Samantha Dasanayake and Sanjay Dalugoda; Sound Recordists Aruna Sanjaya and Carolina Maricone, with Music and Sound Mixing by Chinthaka Jayakody.
Highlights of her time in office, whether it was the nationalization of land or oil (taking the monopoly away from the US company Shell), the coup or the first youth insurrection by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, the introduction of an insurance scheme for the common people, the setting up of the People’s Bank truly for the people, the cutting of the umbilical cord with Great Britain by transforming Sri Lanka to a Republic, allowing Pakistani civilian planes to use Sri Lankan landing space even though she was very close to India’s Indira Gandhi and holding the much-lauded 5th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement, are all there.
The strength of her character is also evident – chastising Chandrika for using a second official car when the one and only car assigned to the family had been taken by Sunethra; refusing to meet the Chief Justice who was heading the Criminal Justice Commission investigating the insurrection on the grounds that it would look as if she were influencing him (he actually wanted to discuss something else) or ordering an investigation into the killing of Kataragama beauty queen Premawathie Manamperi after she heard on the grapevine that an army officer was boasting about it at the CR & FC.
The documentary ends with a very emotional daughter recalling how she lifted her mother from the political wilderness, after she was stripped of her civic rights which would have broken her heart though she faced it with equanimity.
Yes, it’s history; the life of a stateswoman, inextricably linked and intertwined with Sri Lanka’s chequered history.
‘Our Mother, Grandmother, Prime Minister: SIRIMAVO’ is to be released in early 2023.
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