Multi-Ethnic Sri Lanka
Some Visualizations
In this article, I present a series of maps, that visualize Sri Lanka’s ethnic make-up.
The data is based on the 2012 census. For simplicity, I focus on Sinhala, Tamil (Sri Lankan Tamils and Indian Tamils aggregated), and Muslim (Moors and Malays aggregated) ethnicities.
Province
At the provincial level, Sri Lanka’s ethnicity is binary. A Sinhala dominated South, and a Tamil dominated North. While the eastern province contains a Tamil plurality, its demographics are far more diverse than the Northern province.
There was no province with a Muslim plurality.
District
At the district level, there are five types of ethnic zones:
- Sinhala >90%: North Central Province, Southern Province, Kurunegala, Gampaha, and Moneragala
- Sinhala > 50%: Sabaragamuwa Province, Puttalam, Colombo, Kalutara, Matale, Kandy, and Badulla
- Muslim plurality: Trincomalee and Ampara
- Tamil > 50%: The rest of the Northern Province, Batticaloa, and Nuwara-Eliya
- Tamil > 90%: Jaffna and Kilinochchi
There is no district, where more than 50% of the population is Muslim. Trincomalee and Ampara have a Muslim plurality, but not a majority (i.e. > 50%). As we will see next, at the next level of granularity (Divisional Secretariat Level), there are areas with >90% and >50% muslim populations.
Divisional Secretariat Division (DSD)
Going another level deeper, at the Divisional Secretariat Division level, an obvious observation is that much of the country is mono-ethnic.
For the purpose of this visualisation, I define a mono-ethnic DSD where >90% of the population is from one ethnicity.
2nd most common Ethnicity
In this visualisation, we ignore the mono-ethnic DSDs and visualize the next most common ethnicity.
And similarly, by district:
Multi-Ethnicness Index
To measure, “multi-ethnic-ness”, I used the proportion of population from the least popular ethnicity. For example, if some area is 40% Sinhala, 30% Tamil and 25% Muslim, it’s multi-ethnic-ness would be 25%.
Similarly, I also looked at the proportion of the second most common ethnicity:
Hence, while much of Sri Lanka is mono-ethnic, there are several pockets of highly multi-ethnic areas.
These multi-ethnicity metrics are diluted when expanded to district and province levels, because they fail to capture more subtle patterns.
For example, Trincomalee might seem multi-ethnic with at least 27% Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim people. However, on closer inspection, it is obvious that these populations are isolated.
In Colombo
Except for the Colombo DSD, which has a Muslim plurality, most of Colombo has a Sinhala Majority, most of which is mono-ethnic.
Zooming in on the Colombo Municipal Council area (which consists of the Colombo and Thimbirigasyaya DSDs), and the Kotte MC, Dehiwala-Mount Lavinia MC, and the Kolonnawa Urban Council, there is a lot more ethnic diversity.
Appendix: What happened to the others?
The 2012 census included Burghers, Chettys, Barathas and and other ethnic groups. I excluded these from my analysis, because no district had more than 1% of these groups combined.
