Rajiva Wijesinha

Infobox Celebrity
name = Rajiva Wijesinha


birth_date = 16 May 1954
birth_place = Sri Lanka
occupation = Author

Rajiva Wijesinha (born May 16 1954), is a Sri Lankan writer in English, distinguished for his political analysis as well as creative and critical work, a Senior Professor of Languages at the University of Sabaragamuwa, former President/Leader of the Liberal Party of Sri Lanka and a Vice-President of Liberal International. He has been appointed the Secretary-General of the Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process (SCOPP) with effect from June 2007.

Education and career

Wijesinha schooled in Sri Lanka, he won an Open Exhibition in Classics to University College, Oxford when he was 16. After his first degree, he moved to Corpus Christi College, Oxford as an E K Chambers Student (Edmund Kerchever Chambers), and obtained a B.Phil. degree in English, followed by a Ph.D. degree on the subject of Women and Marriage in the early Victorian novel. The thesis was subsequently published by the University Press of America under the title ‘The Androgynous Trollope’.

He taught briefly at the University of Peradeniya before resigning in protest against the increasing authoritarianism of the government of President Junius Richard Jayewardene. He then worked for the British Council in Colombo as its Cultural Affairs Officer before rejoining the University system to initiate English degree programmes for students from backgrounds that had limited English acquisition in school.

In 1982 he supported Chanaka Amaratunga to set up the Council for Liberal Democracy, and in 1987 became the President of the Liberal Party of Sri Lanka when it was established. Though an academic rather than a politician, he took over as Leader of the Party after Amaratunga’s untimely death in 1996, and was the Presidential candidate of the party in 1999, coming 6th out of 15 candidates, and defeating several former parliamentarians. He was Interim Chairman of the Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats (CALD), and has conducted workshops on Liberalism in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Afghanistan and Indonesia, on behalf of the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung (FNS) the German Liberal Foundation. The FNS will shortly be bringing out a new edition of ‘Liberal Values for South Asia’ which he edited in 1997.

He is the only Sri Lankan writer resident in the country whose works have been translated into a European language. ‘Servi’, the translation of ‘Servants’ which won the Gratiaen Award for 1995, was published by Giovanni Tranchida Editore in Milan in 2002, and this was followed in 2006 by ‘Atti di fede’. This last was a translation of ‘Acts of Faith’, based on the 1983 government sponsored riots against Tamils, and the first part of a trilogy that included ‘Days of Despair’ (1987) and ‘The Limits of Love’ (2005).

Wijesinha 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.

Work

Fiction

*Acts of Faith,1985
*Electra (A play in three Acts),1986
*Days of Despair,1989
* [http://www.google.co.uk/books?id=gQIgAAAAIAAJ&q=rajiva+wijesinha&dq=rajiva+wijesinha&pgis=1 The Lady Hippopotamus and Other Stories, 1991]

*Servants: A Cycle, 1995
* [http://www.google.co.uk/books?id=XnCMAAAACAAJ&dq=rajiva+wijesinha An English Education, 1996]
*The Limits of Love, 2005
* [http://www.google.co.uk/books?id=daVUAAAACAAJ&dq=rajiva+wijesinha Servi, 2002 (Italian translation of Servants: A Cycle, 1995)]
* [http://www.google.co.uk/books?id=t0AQAgAACAAJ&dq=rajiva+wijesinha Atti di fede , 2006 (Italian translation of Acts of Faith, 1985)]

Non Fiction

*"The Androgynous Trollope: Women in the Victorian Novel" (1982)

Education

English Language

* [http://www.google.co.uk/books?id=Lo0XAAAACAAJ&dq=rajiva+wijesinha Aspects of Teaching and Learning English as a Second Language, 1991 (edited with James Drury)]
*A Guide to Studying and Thinking, 1998 (with Priyantha Kulatunge and Ralf Starkloff)
* [http://www.google.co.uk/books?id=HlRMnYW2QqsC&pg=PP5&dq=rajiva+wijesinha&sig=O1LuFtwQp-Qv3mBu8vxuWYatrtI A Handbook of English Grammar, 2004]
*Junior English: Grade 6, 2006
*Secondary English: Grade 10, 2006

Literature

* [http://www.google.co.uk/books?id=YY8VAQAACAAJ&dq=rajiva+wijesinha Breaking Bounds: Essays on Sri Lankan Writing in English, 1998]
*Inside Limits: Identity and Repression in (Post) - Colonial Fiction, 1998
*A Selection of Modern Sri Lankan Short Stories in English, edited (with DinaliFernando) 2005
*A Selection of Modern Sri Lankan Poetry in English, edited 2006
*A Selection of English Poetry

Travel and Social History

*Beyond the First Circle: Travels in the Second and Third Worlds, 1993
*Fact and Fable: Aspects of East West Interaction (Proceedings of a Conferenceheld at [Sabaragamuwa] University in August 1999), 2000
*Richard de Zoysa: his life, some work…..a death, 2000
*Across Cultures: Issues of Identity in Contemporary British and Sri Lankan Writing, 2001 (edited with Neluka Silva)
*Gilding the Lily: Celebrating Ena de Silva, 2002
*All Experience: Essays and Reflections (edited essays of Sam Wijesinha), 2001
* [http://www.google.co.uk/books?id=5iCytZ8wYdsC&pg=PP1&dq=rajiva+wijesinha&sig=OK0C7I_eBuXrKB06DM0TvxhdEwc The Foundations of Modern Society, 2004]

Politics

* [http://www.google.co.uk/books?id=Uh-IAAAACAAJ&dq=rajiva+wijesinha Current Crisis in Sri Lanka, 1986]
* [http://www.google.co.uk/books?id=1mpjAAAACAAJ&dq=rajiva+wijesinha Liberal Values for South Asia (together with Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, Colombo) edited, 1997]
*Conflict: Causes and Consequences (proceedings of a Seminar Series conducted by the CLD), 2001 (edited with Priyantha Kulatunge)
* [http://www.google.co.uk/books?id=GMhrTs6dmCgC&pg=PP1&dq=rajiva+wijesinha&sig=tXnycwyMwPuZ6O9q9WRqYv2UF1I Political Principles and their Practice in Sri Lanka, 2005]
*Enemies of Pluralism: Assaults on Diversity, Democracy and the Rule of Law by JR Jayewardene and Velupillai Prabhakaran, 2006
* [http://www.google.co.uk/booksid=qr8sAAAAIAAJ&q=rajiva+wijesinha&dq=rajiva+wijesinha&pgis=1 Ideas for Constitutional Reform, 2007] (Revised and abridged from the originalpublication edited by Dr. Chanaka Amaratunga, 1989)
*Declining Sri Lanka, 2007

Journalism

* [http://www.furl.net/members/Rajiva001/ Rajiva Wijesinha's Journalism Archive]

Articles in books & major journals

*'Sri Lanka' in The Commonwealth Novel since 1969, MacMillan, 1991

*‘Timothy Mo's The Redundancy of Courage: An Outsider's View of Identity’ in the Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 1993
*Interview in Configurations of Exile: South Asian Writers and their World, ed. Chelva Kanaganayakam, TSAR, Toronto, 1995

*Interview in '(Pre)-Fixing Colonialism. An Unfinished Business', Isabel Santaolalla, in Links & Letters 4, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, 1997

*'Teaching Post-Colonial Literature in Sri Lanka' in Dolphin 27 - Teaching Post-Colonialism and Post-Colonial Literatures, edited Anne Collett, Lars Jensen & Anna Rutherford, Aarhus, 1997

*'Aberrations and Excesses: Sri Lanka substantiated by the Funny Boy' in Miscelanea Vol. 18, Universidad de Zaragoza, 1997

*Editorial in the Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Volume 33, Number 1, 1998

*‘Cutting through Territories: Naipaul’s A Way in the World’ in Translating Cultures, KRK/Dangaroo, 1999

*‘Sex and the Single Girl: Scott’s recommendations for the Raj’, in ‘Gladly wolde she teche and lerne’: Essays in honour of Yasmine Gooneratne, London 1999

*‘The History of Secularism’ in Why are we afraid of Secularism in Pakistan?, Christian Study Centre, Rawalpindi, 1999

*‘Travesties: Romance and Reality in the Raj Quartet’, in the Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, Orissa 1998 (appeared 2000)

*‘Spices and Sandcastles: the exotic historians of Sri Lanka’ in Across Cultures: Issues of Identity in Contemporary British and Sri Lankan Writing, proceedings of the Conference held at the British Council Sri Lanka in 2000 (British Council, Colombo, 2001)

*‘A deeper communion: the older women of The Raj Quartet’ in Missions of Interdependence, the publication of the proceedings of the 1999 Tübingen EACLALS Conference (Rhodopi, 2002)

*‘Richard de Zoysa: his life, some work …. and a death’ in Towards a Transcultural Future: Literature and Human Rights in a ‘Post’-Colonial World, the publication of the proceedings of the 2000 ASNEL Conference held in Aachen (Rhodopi 2005)

*‘Bringing back the bathwater: new initiatives in English policy in Sri Lanka’ in The Politics of English as a World Language, the publication of the proceedings of the 2001 ASNEL Conference held in Freiburg (Rhodopi, 2003)

*‘Religion and Culture in the Liberal State’ in Liberal Values for South Asia, ed Rajiva Wijesinha, CLD, Colombo 1997

*‘Education in Sri Lanka – the failure of good intentions and little learning’ in Protection of Minority Rights and Diversity, ed Nanda Wanasundara, International Centre for Ethnic Studies, 2004

*‘Agendas of Oppression’ in I want to speak of tenderness: 50 writers for Anne Ranasinghe, ed. Gerard Robuchon, ICES 2004

*‘Travels in the United States’ in Excursions and Explorations: Cultural Encounters between Sri Lanka and the United States, ed. Tissa Jayatilaka, Colombo 2002

*‘A Refuge’ in Gilding the Lily: Celebrating Ena de Silva, ed Rajiva Wijesinha, Colombo 2002

*Entries on Bapsi Sidhwa and Sri Lankan Literature in the Encyclopaedia of Postcolonial Studies, ed John C Hawley, Greenwood, USA, 2001

*Entry on Sri Lankan Literature in English in Encyclopaedia of South Asian Literature in English, ed Jaina Sanga, Greenwood, USA, 2004

References

Rajiva Wijesinha, MA, DPhil (Oxon), Senior Professor of Languages, Sabaragamuwa University & former President, Liberal Party of Sri Lanka

External links

* [http://www.peaceinsrilanka.org/ The Official Website of SCOPP]
* [http://www.sab.ac.lk/ University of Sabaragamuwa]
* [http://liberalparty-srilanka.org/ Liberal Party of Sri Lanka] official site