Background and Education
Moonesinghe was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon), on 15 February 1927. A member of the family of Anagarika Dharmapala (who named him 'Anil Kumar'), he was brought up with Buddhist and Sinhalese nationalist values, as well as an abhorrence of the colonial power, Britain.
He went to school at Royal College, Colombo, an elite institution which produced many radicals as well as civil servants and bourgeois politicians, where he won his colours in athletics. During the Second World War he organised a brigade of boys to aid the Japanese if they landed on the island and earned himself the nickname 'Rommel' at school. Later he became influenced by communism (he wrote in praise of the Red Air Force) and specifically by Trotskyism.
He went on to University College Ceylon (which later became University of Ceylon), where he excelled in athletics, representing his University at the All India Universities Athletic Meet, which was held regularly in those years, in Lahore in 1944. He taught briefly at Royal Primary School, which had been evacuated to Glendale Bungalow, Bandarawela. He won an exhibition to the University of London and went to Britain in 1945. He sailed on board a troopship; when the news of Churchill's defeat at the general election came through, all the soldiers on board threw their caps in the air and cheered, a fact which greatly encouraged him.
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