When Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike entered politics in 1960, she campaigned on the reputation of her late husband a former Prime Minister of Ceylon who had been assassinated five months earlierand all but inundated the lovely, spice-scented island with her tears. A plump, matronly woman who had served contentedly as the dutiful wife of a strong-willed man and the mother of three children, she was reluctant to run. Finally she announced: "It is a duty I owe to my late husband."
The tactics of grief worked, and she became the world's first female Prime Minister, serving for five years before she was...