Sirima Ratwatte Dias Bandaranaike, commonly known as Sirimavo Bandaranaike, was a Sri Lankan politician who led Sri Lanka for three non-consecutive terms, from 1960-65, from 1970-77, and finally from 1994 until two months before her death in 2000. Bandaranaike was of Sinhalese Buddhist aristocratic descent, and upon her election in 1960, became the world's first elected female prime minister, and later went on to co-govern with her own daughter during her final term. Bandaranaike's predecessor as Prime Minister was her own husband, and after he was assassinated by a Buddhist monk in 1959, she was elected as his successor in 1960. Her goals included improving the lives of women and girls in Sri Lanka, nationalization of industry, and promoting Sinhalese nationalism at the cost of Sri Lanka's other ethnic group, the Tamil people, which eventually led to Civil War. After surviving two coups, Bandaranaike went on to draft a new constitution and cut Sri Lanka's remaining ties to the British, making it a republic. After her successors exacerbated the Civil War, Bandaranaike ran for one last term in 1994 and won. In her later years, she and her party encouraged a more reconciliatory approach to ethnic strife in Sri Lanka. In July 2022, after years of corruption, mismanagement, oppression, violence, and nepotism, Sri Lanka's government was toppled by a popular uprising. The situation remains unstable and chaotic as of this posting.
