Taking his matriculation, he was the first Ceylonese student to pass the Intermediate in Arts of the University of London.
He attended St John's College, Cambridge where he completed law tripos in 1886 gaining a BA and LLB degrees, he was called to the bar as a barrister from the Lincoln's Inn in 1888.
In 1897, he was appointed acting District Judge of Kurunagala and thereafter moved to Kandy as Crown Advocate.
[1][4] C. M. Fernando's writings are some of the oldest written accounts on the subject of Ceylonese dance music forms such as baila.
Fernando, the pioneer labour unionist Councillor who was responsible for submitting a motion in the Legislative Council of Ceylon to abolish the Poll Tax in 1922 and co-founded the Young Lanka League (1915) and the Ceylon Labour Party, being the only Ceylonese to have met Lenin,[6][7][8] His wife and daughter Christobel, were notably the only two among the urbanised elite to be in saree for their portrait in the Twentieth Century Impressions of Ceylon by Arnold Wright.