Since the Sinhala Maha Sabha formed the largest segment of the United National Party, D. S. Senanayake appointed Bandaranaike as Minister of Health and Local Government and he was elected as the Leader of the House.

Following several disagreements, Bandaranaike resigned from the government and crossed the floor to the opposition, forming the Sri Lanka Freedom Party in 1951.

His tenure saw some of the first left wing reforms instituted by the Freedom Party in Sri Lanka such as the nationalizing bus services and introducing legislation to prohibit caste based discrimination.

Bandaranaike removed British naval and air bases in Ceylon and established diplomatic missions with a number of communist states.

Bandaranaike's death led to political turmoil with the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna falling apart under Dahanayake who eventually formed his own party to contest the general elections in March 1960.

With the outbreak of the Great War, Radford returned to Britain and young Bandaranaike attended St Thomas' College, Mutwal, where he boarded with the warden, Rev.

He passed his Senior Cambridge examinations with distinctions in English, Latin, Greek and French, and gained the second Order of Merit in the British Empire that year.

Delayed by the Great War, he entered Christ Church, Oxford, where he read philosophy, politics and economics, and graduated with honours in 1923.

He became Secretary of the Ceylon National Congress (CNC) in 1926, and in December the same year was elected from the Maradana Ward to the Colombo Municipal Council, defeating the trade unionist A. E.

[4] Following the implementation of the Donoughmore Constitution, the State Council of Ceylon was established as the first legislature in the island with its members elected through universal suffrage.

In order to promote Sinhalese culture and community interests, Bandaranaike founded the Sinhala Maha Sabha in 1936.

As leader of the house, he delivered the address of thanks at the ceremonial opening of parliament on 4 February 1948, which marked Ceylon's independence from Britain.

By 1951, it also appeared that Senanayake did not intend to make an early retirement that would have allowed Bandaranaike to succeed him as prime minister.

In July 1951, Bandaranaike resigned from his government posts and crossed the floor to the opposition with several of his close associates from the Sinhala Maha Sabha.

Since the 1950s, SLFP platforms have reflected the earlier organization's emphasis on appealing to the sentiments of the Sinhalese masses in rural areas.

As such he stated that the basis of the party would be the 'Pancha Maha Balavegaya' (Five Great Forces) which consisted of the native doctors, clergy, teachers, farmers and workers.

Bandaranaike responded by assembling a coalition with a group of small Marxist parties to form the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (MEP) to contest the 1956 general elections.

Short on funds for the election, Bandaranaike mortgaged his town house at Rosmead Place to the Bank of Ceylon for Rs 200,000; which he used for his campaign.

The 1956 elections was a landslide victory for the MEP as it gained a two-thirds majority in parliament and Bandaranaike was invited by the Governor General to form a government as the fourth prime minister of Ceylon in April 1956.

[13] Bandaranaike made a radical shift of Ceylon's foreign policy to date, by opening diplomatic channels with the People's Republic of China, the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc and moved towards the Non-Aligned Movement.

The Paddy Lands Bill was introduced by is government to protect peasant farmers, the Employees' Provident Fund was established and May Day declared a public holiday.

Bandaranaike requested that the police intervene against trade union action, the order was declined by IGP Osmund de Silva on the grounds that he believed it to be unlawful.

In April 1959, de Silva was compulsorily retired from the police force and M. Walter F. Abeykoon, a civil servant and Bandaranaike's bridge partner at the Orient Club, was appointed in his place.

[16][17][18][19] Bandaranaike died four years into his term, aged 60 on 26 September 1959, at the Merchant's Ward of the Colombo General Hospital due to wounds sustained after being shot by Talduwe Somarama, a Buddhist monk.

Since Somarama appeared to be a member of the Buddhist clergy, he was not searched for weapons and given free access to the prime minister as he began his routine meetings with the public.

The monk then fired a revolver at Bandaranaike as the latter stood to greet him; he was rushed to hospital but died the following day despite six hours of surgery by Ceylon's most skilled surgeons.

C. P. de Silva, the minister of lands, land development and agriculture, and the leader of the house had taken ill at a cabinet meeting on 25 August 1959 and was flown to the United Kingdom for treatment, making Dahanayake the acting leader of the house and his name had been put up by Bandaranaike as acting prime minister, during his planned visit to the UN.

Following the death of his father Sir Solomon, Bandaranaike inherited the family seat of Horagolla Walauwa in Atthanagalla.

His daughter Chandrika Kumaratunga subsequently became Prime Minister (1994) and then first female Executive president in the country; his only son Anura Bandaranaike went on to become Speaker of the Parliament of Sri Lanka (2000–01) and a Minister (2004–08); and his eldest Sunethra Bandaranaike, who followed her father's footsteps attending Oxford, became a prominent socialite.

On 17 July 1976, a bronze statue of S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike was unveiled on Galle Face Green, it was sculpted by Lev Kerbel and gifted from the Soviet Union.