Side by side

India and Sri Lanka compared

Two sourced records set beside each other — the figures each nation publishes, and the events each chronicle records of the other. Compared, never graded.

🇮🇳India

c. 320 BCEChandragupta Maurya founds the Maurya Empire

Dossier →Chronicle →

🇱🇰Sri Lanka

437 BCEPandukabhaya founds the Anuradhapura kingdom

Dossier →Chronicle →

Shared indicators
43
Domains
9
Crossed events
5
Data through
2026-08-10

The figures, side by side

Each figure is the same observation, with the same source, as on the two dossiers. Every value shows the year it was observed — vintages differ by indicator and nation. A “—” is an absence in the source data, never a zero. Metric names link to the world ranking; values open the figure on its own dossier.

Entangled histories

5 events in which either nation’s sourced chronicle names the other — including under earlier names of the same state. Each is the same record, with the same sources, as on its own chronicle; nothing here was written for this page.

  1. from c. 2nd century BCE

    Hydraulic civilisation and South Indian invasions

    Anuradhapura's kings build vast reservoir-and-channel systems to irrigate the dry plain, while recurrent invasions from South India culminate in the Chola conquest and the abandonment of the capital around 1017.

    Culture & Ideas · from the Sri Lanka chronicle · Anuradhapura and the Coming of Buddhism · Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka, Sacred City of Anuradhapura

  2. 1830s onward

    Plantation economy and Tamil labour migration

    British coffee and later tea estates transform the highlands; indentured South Indian Tamil labourers are brought in to work them, forming the Indian Tamil community of the plantation districts.

    Economy & Trade · from the Sri Lanka chronicle · British Ceylon and the Road to Independence · Sri Lanka: History

  3. 1949

    Indian Tamil plantation workers disenfranchised

    The estate workforce brought from South India is stripped of the vote a year after independence — the opening move of a nationalism that alienated the Tamil minority.

    Politics & Power · from the Sri Lanka chronicle · British Ceylon and the Road to Independence · Sri Lanka country profile

  4. 1987

    The Indo-Lanka accords and the Indian peacekeepers

    Accords create new councils for the Tamil north and east and bring in an Indian peacekeeping force, which spends three years bogged down in the fighting it came to end.

    Politics & Power · from the Sri Lanka chronicle · Republic, Civil War and the Modern Nation · Sri Lanka country profile

  5. 1990

    Indian withdrawal and the expulsion of northern Muslims

    Indian troops leave and the war escalates; the LTTE expels thousands of Muslims from the northern districts.

    Peoples & Migration · from the Sri Lanka chronicle · Republic, Civil War and the Modern Nation · Sri Lanka country profile