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). Together with Osmund Jayaratne and Dicky Attygala, he formed a communist group in Royal College. This group gradually moved to a specifically Trotskyist stance.