Early Life
Abhayavardhana was born in Kandy where his maternal grandfather was an Anglican vicar - at a time when the Church of England was the established church. His father was a government servant and a pillar of the establishment.
Abhayavardhana was educated at St Thomas' College, Mt. Lavinia. His upbringing, being anglicised in culture and religion, was typical of the colonial middle-class and hence remote from the mass of Sinhala-speaking Buddhist people. He and his fellow matriculation student were once posed the question 'Would you have been better off under your own king?' by their teacher, in response to which he began to ponder upon nationalism and British colonial rule.
At fifteen he renounced Christianity and became an atheist. In 1936 he joined University College, Colombo where he read liberal arts and came under the influence of E.F.C. Ludowyk and Doric de Souza, who had Marxist sympathies. He went on to complete his colonial education at the Colombo Law College.
Abhayavardhana's first exposure to radical politics was the Bracegirdle incident, in which the Colonial Government sought to deport an Australian labour activist. He attended a mass meeting at Galle Face Green on 5 May 1937 at Bracegirdle made a dramatic appearance and a stirring speech before being whisked away into hiding. At the time, his father was the Chief Clerk in the office of Governor Reginald Stubbs, who sought the deportation and against whom this meeting was directed.
He organised the Mount Lavinia Debating Society, which invited such speakers as Dr. Colvin R. de Silva and J. R. Jayewardene.
Read more about this topic: Hector Abhayavardhana
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.
He knew that he heard it,
A bird’s cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“All my life I’ve been harassed by questions: Why is something this way and not another? How do you account for that? This rage to understand, to fill in the blanks, only makes life more banal. If we could only find the courage to leave our destiny to chance, to accept the fundamental mystery of our lives, then we might be closer to the sort of happiness that comes with innocence.”
—Luis Buñuel (1900–1983)