Sir Solomon Dias Bandaranaike (1862–1946) held the office of Maha Mudaliyar — chief native interpreter and adviser to the British Governor of Ceylon, the most senior position open to a Ceylonese in the colonial administration.
The Mudaliyar system was the mechanism through which Dutch and then British rule governed the maritime provinces: a hierarchy of native headmen, appointed by the colonial state, drawn largely from a small number of established families.1 Solomon Dias Bandaranaike stood at the top of it for over three decades, and was closely connected to the colonial establishment; his godfather was Governor Sir Arthur Hamilton-Gordon.
He was the father of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, whose political career took a direction — Sinhala nationalism, conversion to Buddhism, opposition to the anglicised elite — that ran directly against the world his father represented.