SRI LANKA

Geography

Area 65,610 sq. km. Large island 80 km. southeast of India.

Population

2000       18,827,054*

2010       20,869,505 (est)

2025       23,546,757 (est)

*There are over 1,500,000 Sri Lankans in other lands.

Peoples

Sinhala 74.6% An Aryan people; largely Buddhist and 4% Christian. Many castes -- unusual for Buddhist societies. Tamil 17%. Declining through war and flight of over 700,000 from the country. Approximately 80% Hindu, 20% Christian. Moor 7.6% Arab-Tamil descent.. Burgher 0.4% Euro-Asian parentage. Other 0.4%. Literacy 90%. Official languages Sinhala and Tamil with English as the link language.

Politics

Independence gained in 1948, as a parliamentary democracy, after 450 years of successive colonial administrations by the Portuguese, Dutch and British. Attempts to Sinhalize national life in 1956 and the attendant discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities provoked increasing communal violence and efforts by extremists to fight for an independent Tamil state in the north and east. A bitter civil war broke out in 1983 and peace efforts failed because of intransigence of extremists on both sides. Politics is increasingly violent and democratic processes are being eroded which serves to increase support for the Marxists who caused much death and havoc in an uprising in 1987-89.

Religion

Buddhism is the state religion and, as such, is protected and promoted. Although freedom for other religions is assured, there has been a steady erosion of that freedom with discrimination against minority religions in taxation, employment and education. Since 1988, there has also been a rising anti-Christian feeling. Christianity is perceived as foreign and a colonial imposition (sadly a partial truth under Portuguese and Dutch rule) and Evangelicals are regularly accused of using financial inducements to poor Buddhists for unethical conversions.

Demographic information from "Operation World".