Hindus currently make up approximately 15% of the Sri Lankan population,
and are almost exclusively Tamil speaking apart from immigrants from India
and Pakistan such as the Sindhis, Telugus and Malayalees. In the 1915 census
they made up almost 25% of the population. Due to assimilation, emigration
(over 1 million Sri Lankan tamils have left the country since independance)
and conversion to various sects of Christianity and Buddhism, today they
are a smaller and still dwindling minority. Hinduism is dominant in the
Northeastern province, where there is a significant number of Tamil people.
Hinduism is also practised in the central regions (where there are significant
numbers of people of Indian Tamil descent) as well as in the capital, Colombo.
According to the government census of 2001, there are about 1,500,000 Hindus
in Sri Lanka (including estimates for the districts in Northern and Eastern
Provinces, in which the census was not carried out). Though this may be
a serious under-count.
Katirkamam (Hindu temple)
The temple dedicated by the Hindus in Kathirkamam has been a place of pilgrimage
and religious sanctity since prehistoric times. At some point in history
it came to be identified with Lord Murukan by devotees in Sri Lanka and
South India. 1966 the German scholar Paul Wirz observed in his book Kataragama,
the Holiest Place in Ceylon, "One could say that all religions are
represented in Kataragama and that all are getting on well with each other.
All ritual differences seem to be resolved out here; all are reconciled
with each other and even the feeling of caste is completely forgotten."
According to a Hinduism Today report that appeared in the magazine in
1986, twenty year later, rancor has replaced reconciliation at Sri Lanka's
southernmost shrine. In recent years, however, religious, social, cultural
and economic changes have left this lord Murukan sanctuary all but a Buddhist
citadel. Few traces of the Hindu past in Kataragama remain.
Hinduism in Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka Religious Tours - Reservation Form
