Sri Lanka, 1962 — military coup conspiracy
Event Summary
On the night of 27 January 1962 a group of senior Christian officers in the Ceylon military and police, code naming the operation Holdfast and later called the Colonels' coup, planned to topple the government of Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the world's first woman prime minister. The plotters, including Colonel F. C.
de Saram, Colonel Maurice de Mel, Rear Admiral Royce de Mel, DIG C. C. Dissanayake and retired DIG Sydney de Zoysa, intended to seize Radio Ceylon, the telegraph office and key bridges, impose a curfew, and force the Governor General to dissolve parliament.
Resentment had built among the Westernised Christian elite over Bandaranaike's Sinhalisation and socialist policies, and the Pakistani coup of Ayub Khan offered inspiration. The government learned of the plan on the afternoon of 27 January, and the parliamentary secretary for defence Felix Dias Bandaranaike directed arrests before it could be executed. A special news bulletin on 28 January announced the foiling and the arrest of seven officers; a white paper followed on 13 February 1962.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
Cross-Reference
Only one dataset carries it. One of the three reference datasets we check against carries this event; the others do not list it. That is not a contradiction — the datasets cover different periods and use different thresholds — but it means the record has had less outside corroboration.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
78001271962
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: Sirimavo Bandaranaike remained in office; the plot was foiled and the conspirators tried, though the Privy Council later quashed the convictions.
Baseline coding: Plot discovered and disrupted before execution. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; not physically harmed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
CSP
Luttwak (29 January 1962)
Wikipedia
New York Times
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →