The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka (ශ්‍රී ලංකා in Sinhala, இலங்கை in Tamil) is a tropical island nation off the southeast coast of the Indian subcontinent. The capital of the country is Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte while the largest city is Colombo.

It was known as Ceylon before 1972, and Serendib and Sinhale, among other names, before that. It was South Asia's oldest democracy.

Sri Lanka has three main ethnic groups. They differ in their religions and origins, and there has often been difficulties between the groups. The total population of the island is over 20 million people, and rapidly expanding.

The largest of the three groups is the population of Sinhalese people.  Most of them are Buddhist.  Their language is Sinhala.  They make up about 75% of the population.

The second largest group is the Tamil people.  They are Hindu.  There are about 2,271,000 Tamils in Sri Lanka.  The Sri Lankan Civil War against Tamil separatists lasted 28 years.

The third largest group is the Sri Lankan Moors. They are Muslim. There are over one and a half million people in this group. They use Tamil as their language today.

Other than these three main groups , there are burghers (descendants of colonial ancestors) , malays and chinese.

In areas such as Dabana , Mahiyangaya ; lives the indigenous group called 'veddas' who are said to descend from Kuweni and Vijaya's son 'Jeewahaththa'.

Buddhist missionaries arrived from India in 250 BC during the time period of King Devanampiyatissa. The kings of the island, and eventually most of the Sinhalese people, became Buddhists. Legend has it that Buddha visited the island three times.

The island was subject to waves of European settlement and eventually colonisation. The Portuguese in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Dutch in the 17th and 18th centuries, and lastly the British from 1796 to 1948. The British traded as the others had done, but also developed plantations of coffee and tea. Tea was planted after a fungus destroyed the coffee plantations in 1869. The tea plantations were the basis of Sri Lankan prosperity for a hundred years. Lastly, rubber plantations were started in the early 20th century. In 1965, Ceylon became the world's leading exporter of tea, with 200,000 tonnes of tea being shipped internationally annually.[8]

Independence from the British was got in 1948, together with Dominion status in the British Commonwealth of Nations. In 1972, Ceylon changed its name officially to the Republic of Sri Lanka, and is still a member of the Commonwealth.[9]

In 2009 came the end of a long Sri Lankan Civil War between Sinhalese and Tamils. Since then tourism has rapidly grown as a source of foreign investment and currency.

National animal of Sri Lanka[source?]

National bird of Sri Lanka

National tree of Sri Lanka

National flower of Sri Lanka

The Sri Lanka flag is also known as the Lion flag because of the Lion on it. The Lion is holding a sword in its right paw. There is a crimson background with four leaves in each corner. There is a yellow border.  On the left of the flag there are the colors green and saffron.

The lion represents bravery. The four leaves represents Karuna, Meththa, Muditha and Upeksha. The orange stripe represents the Sri Lankan Tamils and the green stripe represents the Sri Lankan Moors.

Sri Lanka has 9 provinces.



On April 21, 2019, bombings hit  churches and hotels and left at least 290 people dead and 500 injured in the cities of 
cities of Colombo, Negombo and Batticaloa. According to officials a Sri Lankan group called National Thowheed Jamath was  behind the attacks.

Most of those killed were Sri Lankan nationals but there were also thirty one foreigners who died,  including
eight British, eight Indian, two Turkish, two Australian, one Bangladeshi, one Portuguese and four American nationals.[10][11]