Edwin Wijeyeratne
Sri Lankan politician
Sir Edwin Aloysius Perera Wijeyeratne (Sinhala: ශ්රිමත් එඩ්වින් ඇලෝසියස් පෙරේරා විජයරත්න) (8 January 1889 – 19 October 1968), known as Edwin Wijeyeratne, was a Sri Lankan lawyer, politician, diplomat, and one of the founding members of the Ceylon National Congress and the United National Party. He was a Senator and Minister of Home Affairs and Rural Development in the cabinet of D. S. Senanayake. He thereafter he served as Ceylonese High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and Ceylonese High Commissioner to India
Early life and education
Born on 8 January 1889 in Rambukkana, Sri Lanka Wijeyeratne came from a family that traced its roots to the Kotte Kingdom, which had fled during the Portuguese invasion. His father was Gabriel Perera Wijeyeratne, a notary public and his mother was Catherina Wickremasinghe Jayasekera (née Tennekoon), daughter of Jayasekera Tennekoon, a notary from the Four Korales in Kegalle. The eldest child in the family, he grew up in the Buddenipola Walauwa in Kegalle.
Wijeyeratne received his primary education at the village school in Rambukkana. When nine years old, he transferred to Handessa Village School in Gampola, where he stayed at the home of his future wife, Leela Pethiyagoda. He was subsequently educated at St. Mary's College, Kegalle, before completing his secondary education at St. Joseph's College, Colombo where he passed the Cambridge Senior Exam with Honors and won fifteen prizes at his final school prize-giving.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5346914. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1889 and 1968.
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This entry incorporates text from “Edwin Wijeyeratne” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.