Rajiva Wijesinha

Quick Facts

Full Name	Rajiva Wijesinha
Occupation	Writer
Date Of Birth	May 16, 1954(1954-05-16)
Age	70
Country	Sri Lanka
Birth City	Colombo
Horoscope	Taurus

Rajiva Wijesinha Biography

Rajiva Wijesinha is one of the most popular and richest Writer who was born on May 16, 1954 in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Rajiva Wijesinha MA, DPhil (Sinhala, rjiiv VijeesiNh), is an English writer from Sri Lanka. He is known for his political analysis and creative and critical writing. He was an academic for most of his professional career. He was the Senior Professor of Languages at University of Sabaragamuwa in Sri Lanka.

He was the first Sri Lankan writer to live in the county and whose works were translated into an European language. Servi, an Italian translation of Servants that won the 1995 Gratiaen Award, was published in 2002 by Giovanni Tranchida Editore, Milan. This was followed by Atti di fede in 2006. This was the translation of Acts of Faith. It was inspired by the 1983 government- sponsored riots that were held against Tamils, known as Black July. As a resident at Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, and at the Center for Writers at Hawthornden Castle, he worked on this novel. It is about the kidnapping, murder, and subsequent release of Richard de Zoysa (poet and journalist).

He was instrumental in promoting English Language writing in Sri Lanka, and initiated the English Writers Cooperative of Sri Lanka while he was at the British Council which aided and administered the EWC at its inception. He had earlier edited the New Lankan Review, which provided space for Sri Lankan writers in English when the genre was regaining acceptance, and he served on the Editorial Board of the EWC for over a decade. He has edited several collections of poetry and short stories by Sri Lankan writers in English, most recently Bridging Connections, an Anthology of Stories which also contains translations from Sinhala and Tamil and was published by the National Book Trust of India in 2007.

In June 2007 President Mahinda Rajapakse appointed him Secretary-General of the Sri Lankan Government Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process and in June 2008 he also became concurrently the Secretary to the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights. The Peace Secretariat wound up in July 2009), and in February 2010 he resigned from the Ministry as well as the University, and became a member of parliament on the National List of the United People’s Freedom Alliance following the General Election held in April 2010, following which he was appointed a member of parliament.

After a brief stint at the University of Peradeniya, he resigned in protest against President Junius Richard Jayewardene’s increasing authoritarianism. After leaving the University, he was appointed Cultural Affairs Officer at the British Council in Colombo. He returned to the University to start English degree programs for students who had not learned English in school. He was responsible for the island-wide pre-University General English Language Training program, as well the General English programmes at Affiliated University Colleges which were established in 1992 to integrate employment- oriented courses into the tertiary educational system.

Rajiva Wijesinha Net Worth

Rajiva Wijesinha is one of the richest Writer from Sri Lanka. According to our analysis, Wikipedia, Forbes & Business Insider, Rajiva Wijesinha 's net worth $5 Million. (Last Update: December 11, 2023)

Rajiva Wijesinha was educated at Mt Lavinia’s S Thomas’ College. He later became a Sub-Warden and won an Open Exhibition on Classics to University College. He received his first degree which led to an MA in 1977. After that, he went to Corpus Christi College in Oxford as an E K Chambers student (Edmund Kerchever Chambers) and earned a BPhil in English and a DPhil in the topic of Women and Marriage in early Victorian novels. The University Press of America published the thesis under the title The Androgynous Trollope.

He supported Chanaka Amaratunga in establishing the Council for Liberal Democracy in 1982 and was also Co-Editor for the Liberal Review at a time when there wasn’t enough space for dissenting voices to publish in Sri Lanka. After Dr Amaratunga died in 1996, he was elected President of the Liberal Party of Sri Lanka. He is more comfortable being an analyst than a politician and he became the Party’s Leader after the establishment of the party in 1987. In 1999, he was elected the presidential candidate. He came 6th among 15 candidates and defeated several former parliamentarians. During that period, he led workshops on Liberalism, India, Pakistan and Nepal, as well as Indonesia for the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, the German Liberal Foundation. He also edited Liberal Values For South Asia, which was republished recently by Cambridge University Press, Delhi.

In 2001 he served as a Consultant to the Ministry of Education to initiate the reintroduction of English medium education in the state sector, which had banned it previously for several decades. He was also Academic Consultant to the Sri Lanka Military Academy when it began degree programmes for Officer Cadets. He has served as chair of the Academic Affairs Committee of the National Institute of Education, and has been a member of the National Education Commission and of the Board of the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies.

Height, Weight & Body Measurements

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Who is Rajiva Wijesinha Dating?

According to our records, Rajiva Wijesinha is possibily single & has not been previously engaged. As of December 1, 2023, Rajiva Wijesinha’s is not dating anyone.

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Facts & Trivia

Rajiva Ranked on the list of most popular Writer. Also ranked in the elit list of famous people born in Sri Lanka. Rajiva Wijesinha celebrates birthday on May 16 of every year.