Sri Lanka's Lesser Known Minorites

The Bohras – Plucky Business Barons

The Bohras are hard to miss: the men are unmistakable in their snow-white robes, luxuriant beards, and caps of gold lace, and the women…

The Memons: From Simple Merchants To Business Captains

How could a people who arrived on our shores three generations ago as ordinary merchants have established themselves as captains of business and industry…

Veddas: The First People Of Sri Lanka

Editor’s Note: This photo essay is part of our series on communities around Sri Lanka. Click here for more photographs on the Vedda community…

Sri Lanka’s Lesser Known Religious Minority: The Bahá’í

“An investigation of truth is each one’s responsibility.”- Bahá’u’lláh, founder of the Bahá’í faith. In 1949, one year after Sri Lanka gained independence, a…

Parsis Of Sri Lanka: Denizens From A Land Far Away

The Parsis of Sri Lanka are an intriguing community. They are very small; so small that you can count their families—the Billimorias, Captains, Choksys,…

The Language That Was Left Behind: Sri Lankan Portuguese Creole

It has been three and a half centuries since the Portuguese colonisers left Sri Lanka, but the language they spoke while here still lingers…

From Sindh To Ceylon: The Lankan Sindhis

“They usually set off after the monsoon with the onset of favourable winds, their boats oiled, often for several months at a time… they…

The Story Behind The Burghers Of Sri Lanka

The proud descendants of the Dutch and Portuguese colonies of the 16th and 17th centuries, the Burghers have been a part of Sri Lanka…

The Sri Lankan Malays: Portraits Of A Minority

The Sri Lankan Malays, known to most Sri Lankans as “Ja-minissu” or the Javanese people, are a small Muslim community descended from Indonesian political…

Sri Lanka’s Lesser Known Minorities: The Chetties

Whether it’s a Pulle, Alles, or Perumal, everyone in Colombo knows a Chetty, but while most of us have a vague notion of their…

A Morning With The Sri Lankan Kaffirs

We recently took a bus to Sirambiyadi, in Puttalam, in search of a group of people belonging to Sri Lanka’s lesser known minority, the…