page_title: Edwin Wijeyeratne
section_title: Political career
hierarchical_section_title: Edwin Wijeyeratne / Political career
caption_attribution_description: Picture of Sir Edwin &amp; Lady Leela Wijeyeratne
context_page_description: Sir Edwin Aloysius Perera Wijeyeratne KBE, known as Edwin Wijeyeratne, was a Sri Lankan lawyer, politician, diplomat, and one of the founding members of United National Party. He was a Senator and Minister of Home Affairs and Rural Development in the government of D.S.Senanayake.
context_section_description: During his early days in journalism, Wijeyeratne became political secretary to Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan and was one of the co-founders of a political group, the Young Lanka League. He was a chief live wire in Ceylon's struggle for freedom, having been among the hundreds of Ceylonese arrested by the British colonial government during the riots of 1915. Others who faced imprisonment without charges included prominent figures of the independence movement such as FR Senanayake, DC Senanayake, DS Senanayake, Baron Jayatilaka, Dr CA Hewavitarne, WA de Silva, Arthur V Dias, John Silva, Piyadasa Sirisena and A E Goonesinha.
  Wijeyeratne was a co-founder when the Ceylon National Congress was founded by Sir P Arunachalam and Sir James Peiris. During British colonial rule, when the Lord Soulbury commissioners were on their way to Kandy, DS Senanayake had stationed Wijeyeratne bare-bodied, in a paddy field in Kegalle. There, he was introduced to the commissioners as a typical Sinhala farmer and who spoke in English to the commissioners and impressed on them the need for Ceylon to obtain self-government.  A special invitation was thereby sent to Ceylon by Jawaharlal Nehru and the Indian Congress to visit India for a discussion regarding the independence of Ceylon. Wijeyeratne, DS Senanayake, George E De Silva, JR Jayawardene, Sir Claude Corea and HW Amarasuriya were among the delegates.
  On 21 December 1940, Wijeyeratne was appointed President of the Ceylon National Congress. His Joint Secretaries were Dudley Senanayake and JR Jayawardene. During this period he was chosen to lead the Ceylon National Congress delegation to London. In 1947 Wijeyeratne was appointed to the Senate which was a non-elected upper house of parliament. There he served as acting leader. He subsequently succeeded Sir Oliver Goonetilleke as Minister of Home Affairs and Rural Development in DS Senanayake's government in July 1948. He was a member of the Commission on the Death Penalty which first recommended the abolishing the death penalty from Ceylon in 1958. While minister of Home Affairs and Rural Development, Wijeyeratne served as the Chairman of the select committee to select the National Anthem for Sri Lanka. Namo, Namo, Matha was subsequently selected as the country's national anthem.
caption: Sir Edwin & Lady Leela Wijeyeratne
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