SWRD; Cleverness was his creed and smartness the manner of his mind

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Today is the 54th anniversary of the death of Prime Minister S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike. To mark the occasion we publish a tribute from the book ‘Among those present’ written by D. B. Dhanapala, widely regarded as the doyen of journalism in Sri Lanka and the man with the mighty pen.

By D. B Dhanapala
Twenty-Five years ago I described Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike as a man with a future behind him. It was a time when in that Mecca of mediocrities called the State Council of Ceylon he stood out as an infidel with cleverness as his creed and smartness as the manner of his mind.

He had what is called ‘background.’ That in itself was not anything unique. Many of those in the State Council could with an engaging gesture, point in a leisurely way towards some kind of estimable association, family prestige and good education. But Bandaranaike combined ‘background’ with brilliance; a familiar name with unfamiliar talent.

He certainly was one of the three best speakers we had then in Ceylon. Never at a loss for a word, with fluency and a diction that even Radhakrishnan might envy, he would reel off one perfect sentence after another with an astounding ease that baffled slow-witted men like me.

When he rose of an evening, especially immediately after one of our fathers of repetition, his speeches shone like burnished gold in the sunlight. For a moment or two he would play, with velvet pawed syllables, with his opponent -he might even throw the sop of a left-handed compliment.

Then he seemed to roll up his sleeves and get down to business. He hurled choice epithets at the subject. He stabbed the foe with jewelled phrases, made on the spur of the moment - but made to hurt, all the same.

He would pat a favourite - or better perhaps himself - on the back. And then he rode away in a storm of oratory, all spontaneity and splendour with the distant thud of his galloping prose resounding in our ears.


It was neither lightning nor thunder; nor was it an earthquake. It was just the Member for Veyangoda.

But his speeches were not faultless. He had the heavy habit of talking in italics - at the top of his voice. And he underlined almost every other word of the italics with an absolutely unnecessary emphasis. The effect of stressing too much was not stressing anything at all!

With this distressing disease of underlining his megaphone voice, he combines an irritating appreciation of himself at every turn of phrase and parenthesis. Maybe, he paused for just a moment; looked round for applause; then, finding not enough forthcoming, remedied the defect himself by giving a little chuckle of appreciation - something between the clucking of a hen after laying and the laugh of a juggler on doing a celebrated trick.

He talked in jewelled prose well enunciated. But the magic was entirely in the fine phrasing; the appeal, in the strong epithet. He knew how to say it. If only he had known then what to say!



"It was neither lightning nor thunder; nor was it an earthquake. It was just the Member for Veyangoda. But his speeches were not faultless. He had the heavy habit of talking in italics - at the top of his voice. And he underlined almost every other word of the italics with an absolutely unnecessary emphasis."



Not that there were no occasions when he did know to a point of cruelty the right thing to utter. Hurt his vanity and he starts to the quick. Give him a personal pinprick to see how quick he was on the uptake. Pat comes the retort, crushing in vengeance, killing in venom.

He was the master of the retort discourteous, the apostle of the sharp invective in the country.

(Courtesy “Among Those Present”)