Word: banda
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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...
...morning last week, soon after new U.S. Ambassador Bernard Gufler* 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...
...Love You." 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...
...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...
...Little Outbreak." 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-a secret method of treatment with herbs and massage. According to Colombo police, the monk...