ABSTRACT
The Sri Lankan island was occupied by the Portuguese, Dutch and British in the sixteenth, seventeenth and nineteenth centuries respectively. Ceylon proclaimed its independence in 1948 and the country was then renamed to Sri Lanka in 1972. Persistent tensions among the Sinhalese majority and Tamil separatists triggered an ethnic war in the mid-1980s that cost tens of thousands of lives (MFA, 2002). The population of Sri Lanka was 19,408,635 (July 2001 est.) which was steadily
growing at the rate of 1.4 per cent (2001 est.). The sex ratio for the total population was 0.95 male per female at the time of writing. Sri Lanka is a multi racial country with a large Buddhist majority (70 per cent). Ethnic Hindu comprises 15 per cent, Christian 8 per cent and Muslim 7 per cent of the total population. The ongoing civil strife in the northern region of the country has taken its toll both on economy as well as development of this otherwise highly literate (about 90.2 per cent) country.
