(1) a scan of rather incomplete cumulation of some sources that
had covered the Solomon Bandaranaike assassination
(2) the political context in
1959, as reported in the Time and Newsweek magazines.
Historian Prof. K.M.de Silva�s version (1981)
�By the beginning of 1959, the [political] coalition was coming apart, although
in parliament the SLFP was strong enough, thanks to the disarray in the ranks of
the Opposition, to continue its dominance. The first phase of the political
crisis ended with the resignation of the left-wing group in the Cabinet, but the
prime minister was now left with a cabinet of mediocrities, and a party in which
the more liberal and reformist groups were becoming less influential. This
bitter struggle for power within the governing party culminated in
Bandaranaike�s assassination on 26 September 1959 [sic; the assassination
date was 25 September.] The instrument of his assassination was a bhikku,
and the conspiracy was hatched by the most powerful political bhikku of
the day, who had contributed greatly to Bandaranaike�s triumph in 1956 and who
had engineered the elimination of the left-wing ministers from the Cabinet early
in 1958. In this murder conspiracy, the most sordid commercial considerations
were mixed with the zest for control over the government. At the time of his
assassination Bandaranaike was no longer the masterful politician he had been in
1956-7, since when his hold on the electorate had weakened. But his murder
dramatically changed the political situation.� (p. 524)
Note that in the above version, Prof. Kingsley de Silva had refrained from
naming the assassin and the prime conspirator!
History Compilers Samarasinghe and Samarasinghe version (1998)
This is from the
Historical Dictionary of Sri Lanka. The entry on
S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike ends with the following sentence.
�However, his tenure as prime minister was brought to a tragic end by his
assassination at the hands of a bhikku gunman.� (pp. 38-39)
Akin to Prof. Kingsley de Silva, the Samarasinghes also had refrained from
naming the assassin and the prime conspirator!
Historian Sanmugathasan�s version (1972)
Sanmugathasan�s version was written while he was imprisoned in 1971 by the
regime of Solomon Bandaranaike�s widow, Sirimavo Bandaranaike.
�The parting of ways with the radical elements of his Cabinet had left
Bandaranaike a prisoner of the reactionary sections � some of whose
representatives successfully plotted his assassination on the 25th of
September 1959. As he bent low to pay his respects to a Buddhist monk, who was
seated on his verandah, the monk whipped out a pistol from out of his robes, and
emptied it into the frail figure of the prime minister. It was the eve of the
day on which the prime minister was to have left for the UN. On the next day,
the prime minister succumbed to his injuries.
The circumstances of his death, and the courage with which he met it, as well as
the spirit of forgiveness, which he displayed to his assailant, have built a
halo around his name. An attempt was even made to deify him. Under such
circumstances, no sober appraisal of his place in Ceylon politics has been made.
A legend has sprung up about the so-called Bandaranaike policies he is alleged
to have followed. But if anyone is pinned down to explain what is meant by the
Bandaranaike policies, no satisfactory answer is forthcoming. Perhaps the
vagueness of the concept permits each one to interpret it in his own way and do
as he likes all the while claiming to be a devout follower of the Bandaranaike
policies � which is what is happening now.� (pp. 67-68)
Compared to Prof. Kingsley de Silva�s description and that offered by
Samarasinghe and Samarasinghe, Sanmugathasan provides a little more description
on the circumstances and the context under which Solomon Bandaranaike was
assassinated. But, he also had refrained from naming the assassin and the prime
conspirator.
Anthropologist Edmund Leach�s description (1973)
Among the few academic papers that I have read on the context of Solomon
Bandaranaike�s assassination, I liked the unflattering portrayal presented by
British anthropologist Edmund Leach. Here it is (the words in italics, are as in
the original):
�The complexities of the underlying contradictions of cultural identity, part
�traditional�, part �modern�, are well illustrated by the record of the martyred
prime minister of Ceylon, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike (born S.W.R. Dias). The
particular relevance of this example is that it shows that, in the context of
Ceylon, which was first colonized by Europeans in the sixteenth century, the
polarization of traditional versus modern does not fit at all
tidily with either of the alternative polarizations, old versus new,
or Asian versus European.
Bandaranaike�s family had been Mudaliyars � native Government agents of the
highest rank � from the earliest days of European colonization. Like the Vicar
of Bray they had always loyally supported the paramount power � Portuguese,
Dutch, or British. A portrait of Don Solomon Dias Bandaranaike, Gate Mudaliyar
(great grandfather of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike) who died in 1859, appears in J.E.
Tennent where the reader�s attention is drawn to the �gold chains and medals by
which his services have been recognized by the British Government�. S.W.R.D.�s
father Sir Solomon Dias Bandaranike, Kt., C.M.G., Maha Mudaliyar, served as
native A.D.C. to the Governor of Ceylon and extra A.D.C. to King George V. The
whole family had been staunchly Christian for over a century. Around 1920 all of
them seem to have been known by the simple surname Dias; in 1950 about half had
reverted to a hyphenated Dias-Bandaranaike; only S.W.R.D. seems to have
suppressed the Dias to an initial. S.W.R.D. himself only learned to speak
Sinhalese after taking his degree at Oxford and qualifying as a barrister in
London. And like other contemporaries he did this to further his political
career. Yet despite his apparently anglophile Christian background, Bandaranike
managed in the early 1950�s to present himself to the electorate as the devoutly
chauvinistic leader of Sinhalese Buddhists under the slogan: �Sinhalese is the
national language of Ceylon; Buddhism is our national religion.�
Bandaranaike�s success in the 1956 elections was, without any question, mainly
due to the well organized and well-financed campaign of the Eksath Bhikku
Peramuna (EBP), a specially recruited team of political monks which was active
in every Sinhalese constituency throughout the country. The EBP was the brain
child of the venerable Mapitigama Buddharakkhita, the presiding monk of the very
wealthy Kelaniya temple. Various aspects of Buddharakkhita�s murky political
background and financial dealings are given in considerable detail by Smith and
Bechert. Here it will suffice that Buddharakkhita owed his position in the
Kelaniya temple to close personal ties with a variety of wealthy politicians,
some of whom were his relatives. The network of kinsfolk included Bandaranaike
himself.
Once in power, Bandaranaike was greatly embarrassed by his personal debt to
Buddharakkhita. Buddharakkhita�s mistress was made Minister of Health and
Buddharakkhita himself was given an appointment under the ministry, but
Bandaranaike was unable to fulfill his lavish pre-election promises to the
Sangha as a whole. The Marxist MEP members of his coalition government refused
to accept the communal, anti-Tamil implications of a flat declaration that
Sinhalese was the national language and Buddhism the national religion.
Bandaranaike was also unable to give Buddharakkhita and his relatives the
financial prerequisites which they had apparently been led to expect.
As a consequence of this backstage quarrel, Bandaranaike found that the
political support he had previously received from the Sangha was fading rapidly.
However, the quarrel was not public. Although the relations between
Buddharakkhita and the Minister of Health were a topic of gossip and scandal,
the prime minister still treated Buddharakkhita with the greatest public
deference. Under the circumstances, it seems altogether astonishing that in
September 1959 Bandaranaike should have been assassinated by a relatively junior
monk acting on the orders of Buddharakkhita and that the latter should
subsequently have been condemned to death for complicity in murder. (The
sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment.) Bandaranaike�s posthumous
career has conformed to a well-established tradition concerning the sanctity of
murdered religious leaders; he is now variously worshipped as a god (deviyo)
and revered as a Bodhisattva (future Buddha).
What is astonishing is not that there should have been an assassination but that
the shrewd Buddharakkhita should have so misjudged the consequences. Overnight,
the unpopular prime minister became martyred hero. For the first time in living
memory Buddhist monks were stoned in the street. The Sangha had lost every
advantage it had gained in the past ten years. But, even in this crisis, public
reaction took a predictable and traditional form. The newspaper editorials
carried the banner, �Let us cleanse the Sangha!� � (pp. 44-46)
In the above description, Edmund Leach had identified the prime conspirator
Buddharakkhitha Thero, by name. But he had refrained from naming the monk
assassin, Somarama Thero. I�d also note that Philip Gunawardena (1901-1972), the
sacked Marxist MEP member from Solomon Bandaranaike�s Cabinet, turned into a
rabid anti-Tamil racist in late 1950s.
The Muddler (Time, April 6, 1959)
In the eleven years since it won independence from Britain, Ceylon has had a
cautious, conservative government and a wild-eyed socialist one.Last week, in
the third year of the socialist administration of frail, fidgety premier Solomon
West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike, 60, Ceylon sweltered in the pre-monsson heat.
In the capital city of Colombo, the stores were packed with luxury goods, the
streets jammed with cars, the sidewalks filled with smiling people and
saffron-robed Buddhist monks under black umbrellas. In the lush countryside
there were signs of the paralyzing drought that had lasted for months. But the
island�s cash products � tea, rubber, coconuts, rice � still found a ready world
market.
There seems to be no hint in Ceylon of last year�s bestial communal riots
between Hindu Tamils and Buddhist Sinhalese, in which an estimated 1,000 died �
some of them soaked with kerosene and burned alive (Time, June 16, 1958),
premier Bandaranaike now refers to the riots, largely caused by his own
ineptitude, as �one of those little outbreaks�. In addition to the riots,
�Banda� has buoyantly survived incessant strikes, a rising cost of living,
unemployment, a flight of capital, floods, drought and hysterical politics.
Having survived so much, Banda has a fair chance to last out his five year term
of office, even though movie audiences hoot at his appearance in newsreels, and
he has lost much of his 1956 electoral support.
Typical of Banda�s nimble maneuvering is his makeshift coalition Cabinet, where
the political spectrum ranges from Communist-minded food minister Philip
Gunawardena, 58, to an efficient combine of right-wing, pro-Western politicians.
�The only cementing factor�, says Opposition leader Dr. N.M. Perera, a handsome,
sleepy-eyed Trotskyite (The Trotskyite, or anti-Stalinist, Communists hold 14
seats in a 100-man House of Representatives. The only other place in the world
where Trotskyites have any real influence is Bolivia.), is the mutual dread of
an election�. By gently shifting his influence, Banda alternately encourages and
hampers Gunawardena in his proposals for land reform and rural cooperatives;
little has been done to fulfill election promises of nationalizing tea and
rubber plantations, or of turning Ceylon into a model Socialist country.
Banda has even succeeded in pushing through his wrangling parliament a tough
public security bill giving the government emergency powers against local
disturbances and against strikes that it considers �politically motivated�. The
debate on the bill got so heated that police had to storm parliament and carry
out opposition leaders, including Dr. Perera, who kept right on orating as he
was being borne horizontally from the hall.
Banda�s guile is equally evident in his dealings with East and West. After a
flurry of deals last year with the Soviet-block nations he is now slipping from
their deadly embrace. A Red Chinese delegation has cooled its heels for a month
in Colombo trying to arrange a new rice-for-rubber barter, after the other one
worked out badly. Of 16 ambitious projects to be set up with Soviet Russian aid,
only one � a sugar factory � is beyond the planning stage. Banda�s smiles are
currently lavished on the US aid missions, which since 1956 have spent $36
million on a variety of Ceylon�s problems, from malaria control to extending the
runways at Colombo airport. More than 1,600,000 schoolchildren get a daily glass
of milk and a bun from US surplus foods. Even glowering anti-American food
minister Gunawardena works closely with US people on agricultural and irrigation
projects.
Economically better off than India, politically no more unstable than Indonesia,
Ceylon moves imperfectly forward � but it does move. Said a Western observer to
a Time correspondent in Colombo last week: �It�s utterly chaotic, and
yet, I�m less worried about Ceylon today than I was a year ago. If the Ceylonese
have learned anything from the British, I guess it is the art of muddling
through.�
Jealousy among the Marxists (Time, June 1, 1959)
For three years, Ceylon�s frail-looking preimier Solomon West Ridgeway Dias
Bandaranaike has needed all his considerable skill at compromise to hold
together his United Front coalition. Chief threat: the unsettling presence in
his Cabinet of pro-Communist food and agriculture minister Philip Gunawardena.
A University of Wisconsin-trained Soviet apologist, Gunawardena used his
powerful position to force nationalization of Colombo�s port and bus systems and
collectivization of many of the island�s fertile paddy fields. Now he was
setting up an island-wide system of cooperatives frankly dedicated to his
declared objective: �All private enterprise must totally disappear.�
Having had their fill of Philip, right-wing ministers resolved to boycott
Cabinet meetings until he was sacked. Bandaranaike agreed to clip Gunawardena�s
wings by taking from him three of his ministry�s four departments, Gunawardena
resigned, taking with him into opposition three other ministers. Bandaranaike
was left with a parliamentary minority of 47 out of 99 seats, and should have
tumbled from office.
But things do not happen that way in Ceylon. Constitutionally, the government
need not resign unless it loses a vote on the budget � which does not come up
until August. Besides, Bandaranaike quickly patched up a new alliance with
parliament�s three Communists and 14 Trotskyites, who resent Gunawardena�s
energetic bid for personal publicity and power. Trading on the jealousies that
divide Ceylon�s varied Marxists, Bandaranaike hopes to serve out his term till
1961, and seems secure for perhaps six months.
The Two Gees ( Newsweek, June 1, 1959)
If former US Ambassador to Ceylon Maxwell H. Gluck found it hard to recall the
name of the island�s studious prime minister, Solomon West Ridgeway Dias
Bandaranaike (Newsweek, August 12, 1957), he would have been even harder
pressed last week by the names of two possible contenders for Bandaranaike�s
power. On the left was Philip Gunawardena, the Trotskyite Minister of
agriculture and food; to the right was the Governor-General, Sir Oliver
Goonetilleke.
Gunawardena has long sought to socialize Ceylon by pushing through paddy-field
legislation that would, in effect, open the way for the communalization of small
holdings throughout the island. Supporting him are Marxists, Trotskyites,
Communists, and neutralists, all of whom are fighting among themselves.
Last week, after the prime minister had moved to curb the ambitious Gunawardena
by stripping off most of his powers in the Ceylon Cabinet, the left-winger
resigned, taking with him enough members of Bandaranaike�s government to
threaten a �no confidence� vote, and perhaps a general strike.
If Gunawardena makes trouble, moderates may look to Governor-General
Goonetilleke, who is Commander in Chief of the army. Struck by the example of
Gen. Ne Win in Burma, he is reportedly considering establishing one-man military
rule. But Goonetilleke, who enjoys great public prestige, is an ardent supporter
of parliamentary government. So far, he has made no move.
As of now, observers believe that prime minister Bandaranaike and his minority
government will manage to muddle through until late summer. But with a
downward-sliding economy, a change cannot be long delayed.
The People�s Premier (Time, October 5, 1959, p. 32)
Whenever one of his subordinates suggested that an extra bodyguard might be a
good thing to have around, wiry, fragile-looking Solomon West Ridgeway Dias
Bandaranaike, 60, would only laugh. Proud of being known as �the people�s
premier� of Ceylon, �Banda� refused to worry about personal safety, almost every
morning would throw open his rambling bungalow on Colombo�s shady Rosemead Place
to all who wanted to see him.
One morning last week, soon after new US Ambassador Bernard Gufler (a successor
to the hapless Maxwell H. Gluck of Manhattan, who, shortly before his departure
for Ceylon, won nationwide jeers � and new US fame for Bandaranaike � by
admitting to the Senate that he could not �call off� the Ceylonese prime
minister�s name.) had left the bungalow, a monk in saffron robes approached the
prime minister on the veranda. While Banda bowed low in the Buddhist greeting,
another man in monk�s robes drew near and whipped out a .45 pistol. As the prime
minister cried out his wife�s name, �Sirima! Sirima!� his assailant fired again
and again. By the time a sentry brought the assassin down with a wound in the
thigh, four bullets had pierced Banda�s liver, spleen and large intestine. Next
morning, after a five-hour operation, Solomon Bandaranaike died.
The son of a rich Ceylonese public servant whose devotion to the British Crown
won him a knighthood in 1907, Banda had long steered a perilous course through
the tricky tides of Asian politics. He was raised a Christian and educated at
Oxford where his debating skill earned him the admiration of his English
classmate, Anthony Eden. But once back home, Banda renounced Christianity in
favor of Buddhism, threw off Western dress in favor of long white sarongs, and
plunged into the movement that was to bring Ceylon independence within the
Commonwealth in 1948. In 1951 he set up his own Marxist Ceylon Freedom Party.
Five years later he was, as Eden had predicted, his country�s prime minister.
�I do not love you, Banda, dear,� his critics hooted, �because you change from
year to year.� Yet Banda�s talent for political survival was so astonishing that
a cartoonist once pictured him as a grinning cat, leaning on his own sixth
gravestone and saying, �Well, six down, three to go.� Though he once actually
fell short of a parliamentary majority, he managed to hold on to power by a
judicious distribution of parliamentary secretaryships and minor portfolios. He
survived brawls and Cabinet mutinies, ruled, until his death, with a shaky
majority of one.
Last year Banda�s country was torn by bloody riots between Hindu Tamils and
Buddhist Sinhalese, in which men were burned alive. Though his own vacillations
and tendency to flirt with political and religious extremists were largely
responsible for the riots, Banda airily dismissed them as �one of those little
outbreaks�. It was a far less serious little outbreak that finally brought him
down. His assassin turned out to be a 43- year-old monk who practices the
traditional Ayurvedic (native) medicine � asecret method of treatment with herbs
and massage. According to Colombo police, the monk bore a personal grudge
against Banda, presumably because of his refusal to rid Ceylon of its modern
doctors.
Within an hour after the monk�s bullets found their mark, Ceylon�s tough,
puckish Governor General Sir Oliver Goonetilleke proclaimed what amounted to a
state of emergency over Ceylon � a volatile land that boasts the highest
homicide rate in Asia. But next day, as Banda�s like-minded colleague, Education
minister Wijayananda Dahanayake, took over the premiership, a strange quiet
settled over the country. Taxis, buses and cars flew mourning flags of white;
the only hint of violence lay in a rising wave of public feeling against the
Buddhist clergy. In Colombo a two mile-long queue waited five hours in the
scorching sun to pass by Banda�s coffin in the Rosemead Place bungalow. At first
the police refused to admit them, but at last Sir Oliver intervened. �The gates
of the prime minister�s home,� he said, �were always open to the people. They
must be open now.�
Eruption in Ceylon (Newsweek, October 5, 1959, pp. 39-40)
A frail little man in wrap-around skirt and a thin scarf stood calmly smoking
his pipe on the veranda of his bungalow in Colombo�s most luxurious residential
district. Preparing to visit Washington to discuss Ceylon�s problems with
President Eisenhower, he chatted with visitors seeking advice or favors. When
two saffron-robed Buddhist monks appeared, he bowed low before them, then raised
his eyes � and looked into the barrel of a .45 automatic. One of the monks had
flipped it out of his robes, and now fired point-blank. The 60 year-old prime
minister of Ceylon, Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike, staggered from the
veranda, a bullet lodged in his liver. The automatic slammed two more times; two
more bullets plowed into his body.
Bandaranaike�s murder last week, like most of the violence, intrigue, and
trouble that have plagued Ceylon since he became prime minister in 1956, seemed
both pointless and avoidable. But like most of Ceylon�s other troubles, it could
be traced to a clash between the deeply rooted superstitions of the East and
Western concepts of government, economics and science.
On the very evening of the day he was shot, Bandaranaike was scheduled to review
the recommendations of a Colombo Plan expert on Ceylon�s rival East-West medical
practices. Many were fearful that the Western-educated prime minister would
support Western methods against the ancient form of medicine called Ayurveda
(which features herbs, hotcompresses and body massage).
Rushed to a Western-style hospital, Bandaranaike asked his people to forgive
�this foolish man� who had shot him. Then he underwent corrective surgery � and
died 22 hours later. The assassin and his companion � both Aurveda practitioners
� were jailed. Outside the hospital, a thousand women wailed.
The death of Bandaranaike precipitated the island into yet another political
crisis. Gov. Gen. Sir Oliver Goonetilleke, whose office is one of Ceylon�s few
remaining links to the British Commonwealth, ordered the armed forces to patrol
the streets. He also asked Bandaranaike�s chosen successor, Education Minister
Wijayananda Dahanayake to take over the government. The problem: the ruling
Freedom Party holds only a one vote majority in parliament.
Unlike Bandaranaike, a gentle-mannered and cultured man who graduated from
Christ Church, Oxford, Dahanayake is a more flamboyant, grass-roots type of
politician with a flair for the unpredictable. Like his predecessor, however, he
is a fervent nationalist and neutralist.
What changes Dahanayake might make are as unpredictable as he is. But with
Bandaranaike gone and 9 million island people deeply divided linguistically
(between Singhalese and Tamil), religiously (between Buddhist, Hindu, Christian
and Moslem), socially (between East and West), and politically (between
Tortskyits, Socialists, and conservatives), the future looked dark indeed for
stable democratic rule.�
Fearful Men (Newsweek, December 21, 1959)
�I am resigning because I do not want my throat cut in broad daylight.� When
prime minister Wijayananda Dahanayake of Ceylon used those melodramatic words to
explain his withdrawl last week from his own ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party, he
was speaking figuratively � or was he?
The question arises because Ceylon is face to face with political and economic
chaos. Cabinet ministers have taken to carrying revolvers, other leading
citizens are hiring bodyguards. The banks are closed, trade is suffocating,
Marxist unions control the docks. Meanwhile, the motive for the recent
assassination of prime minister Bandaranaike, Dahanayake�s predecessor, has
remained shrouded in mystery, despite the efforts of 125 investigators and two
detectives from Scotland Yard. No trials have yet been held, but there are
suspects and one of the most prominent among them is a leader of Dahanayake�s
own Freedom Party.
Faced with internal party dissensions as well as loud opposition demands that
his government resign, Dahanayake tried instead to get out from under and save
himself. Last week, in quick succession he dissolved parliament, fired five
Cabinet ministers, quite the Freedom Party, and announced that he will form a
new political party of his own.
As caretaker prime minister, however, Dahanayake will continue to rule only
until March 19, the date set for new elections by Governor-General Sir Oliver
Goonetilleke. And in the turbulent three months that must pass before that date,
it may not be only the prime minister of Ceylon who will worry about getting his
throat cut � whether figuratively or otherwise.
