Ethnic, religious, and linguistic distinctions in Sri Lanka are
essentially the same. Three ethnic groups—Sinhalese, Tamil, and
Muslim—make up more than 99 percent of the country’s population, with
the Sinhalese alone accounting for nearly three-fourths of the people.
The Tamil segment comprises two groups—Sri Lankan Tamils (long-settled
descendants from southeastern India) and Indian Tamils (recent
immigrants from southeastern India, most of whom were migrant workers
brought to Sri Lanka under British rule). Slightly more than
one-eighth of the total population belongs to the former group.
Muslims, who trace their origin back to Arab traders of the 8th
century, account for about 7.5 percent of the population. Burghers (a
community of mixed European descent), Parsis (immigrants from western
India), and Veddas (regarded as the aboriginal inhabitants of the
country) total less than 1 percent of the population.
The Sinhalese constitute the majority in the southern, western,
central, and north-central parts of the country. In the rural areas of
the Wet Zone lowlands, they account for more than 95 percent of the
population. The foremost concentration of the Sri Lankan Tamils lies
in the Jaffna Peninsula and in the adjacent districts of the northern
lowlands. Smaller agglomerations of this group are also found along
the eastern littoral where their settlements are juxtaposed with those
of the Muslims. The main Muslim concentrations occur in the eastern
lowlands. In other areas, such as Colombo, Kandy, Puttalam, and
Gampaha, Muslims form a small but important segment of the urban and
suburban population. The Indian Tamils, the vast majority of whom are
plantation workers, live in large numbers in the higher areas of the
Central Highlands.
Among the principal ethnic groups, language and religion determine identity. While the mother tongue of the Sinhalese is Sinhala—an Indo-Aryan language—the Tamils speak the Dravidian language of Tamil. Again, while more than 90 percent of the Sinhalese are Buddhists, both Sri Lankan and Indian Tamils are overwhelmingly Hindu. The Muslims—adherents of Islam—usually speak Tamil. Christianity draws its followers (about 7 percent of the population) from among the Sinhalese, Tamil, and Burgher communities.
Sri Lanka’s ethnic relations are characterized by periodic disharmony. Since independence, estranged relations between the Sinhalese and the Tamils have continued in the political arena. Intensifying grievances of the latter group against the Sinhalese-dominated governments culminated in the late 1970s in a demand by the Tamil United Liberation Front, the main political party of that community, for an independent Tamil state comprising the northern and eastern provinces. This demand grew increasingly militant and eventually evolved into a separatist war featured by acts of terrorism. The violence to which the Tamils living in Sinhalese-majority areas were subjected in 1983 contributed to this escalation of the conflict. The secessionist demand itself has met with opposition from the other ethnic groups.
The Colombo Metropolitan Region dominates the settlement system of Sri
Lanka. It includes the legislative capital, Sri Jayewardenepura Kotte.
It is also the foremost administrative, commercial, and industrial
area and the hub of the transport network of Sri Lanka. Urban
settlements outside this area are much smaller and less diversified in
functions.
The movement of people from rural areas to urban areas has remained a
slow process in Sri Lanka. The pronounced trend has been that of
migration into the Dry Zone interior, which has doubled its share of
the country’s population since independence.
About four-fifths of all Sri Lankans live in rural settlements, of
which there are several types. In areas of high rural population
density—the entire Wet Zone, the Jaffna Peninsula, and a few coastal
localities in the east—villages merge with one another, each a
conglomerate of homestead gardens interspersed with tracts of paddy.
Villages of the Wet Zone interior also contain smallholdings
monocropped with rubber or coconut and terraced paddy land. In the
Central Highlands this type of rural landscape gives way to extensive
plantations under tea or rubber cultivation. Here the villages are
dense clusters of barrack-type structures, each cluster occupying no
more than 2.5 acres (1 hectare) but accommodating up to several
hundred plantation worker families. A third major type of rural
settlement is found in the Dry Zone, where the majority of people live
in colonization schemes (irrigation-based planned settlements). Each
colony, a distinct entity, features agricultural allotments of near
uniform size with large stretches of paddy occupying the irrigable
land.
At independence Sri Lanka had a population of about 6.5 million, which
by the early 1990s had increased to more than 17 million. The rate of
population growth averaged about 2.6 percent annually up to the early
1970s and declined steadily to below 1 percent at the turn of the 21st
century. By the end of the civil war, the population had reached more
than 21 million, but its growth rate remained below 1 percent well
after the war.
The population is young. About one-fourth of the population is under
the age of 15, and nearly half of the population is under the age of
30. Life expectancy is 81 years for women and 74 years for men.