Arudpragasam was born in 1988 in Colombo, Sri Lanka to Tamil parents. He grew up in a wealthy family in Colombo. His Tamil family originally came from the northeast of the country. However, he himself never came into direct contact with the civil war that raged in the northeast from 1983 to 2009. Although he did not come from a literary family, his parents encouraged him to read books from a young age. Arudpragasam did not follow their advice until the age of 15 or 16, when he found a taste for philosophical literature in the nearby Vijitha Yapa bookstore. He moved to the United States at the age of 18 to attend Stanford University, graduating with a B.A. in 2010. After graduating from Stanford, he lived in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu for a year. He later began a PhD in philosophy at Columbia University, which he completed in 2019.