Hector Abhayavardhana - Revolutionary

Revolutionary

Abhayavardhana was recruited to the Lanka Sama Samaja Party in 1940 by Esmond Wickremasinghe (later to be father of Ranil Wickremasinghe). He became part of the clandestine section of the LSSP that was established, in anticipation of its proscription, to work underground. After the party leaders were imprisoned and escaped to India he joined them in exile there (disguised as an Anglican priest) and worked in the Independence movement.

He became a member of the Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India, Ceylon and Burma (BLPI) and began his career as a writer. His two pamphlets 'The Saboteur Strategy of the Constructive Programme' and on the Quit India Movement of the Congress Party were considered to be seminal theoretical works. When the main LSSP leaders returned to Sri Lanka after the war, Abhayawardhana was among the Sama Samajists who remained in India.