Sri Lanka is an island, roughly the size of West Virginia, at the southern tip of India. It is separated from its large neighbor, India, by about 29 kilometers (18 miles) of sea. The Sinhala, who constitute about 75 percent of the island's estimated 2003 population of 20 million, are mostly Buddhists and unique to the island. The Sri Lankan and Indian Tamils who make up approximately 17 percent of the population are mostly Hindus and have counterparts in southern India.

British colonizers signed a convention in 1815 agreeing to maintain Buddhism as the official state religion in Sri Lanka, known as Ceylon until 1972. However, the introduction of Christianity, the English language, and other Western institutions resulted in violations of that agreement. Sri Lankan Tamils as a group gained political and economic advantage over the Sinhala Buddhist majority. Nevertheless, with the introduction of universal franchise and a parliamentary democracy in 1931, the Sinhala Buddhist...