Indian life in Sri Lanka: food, festivals and entertainment

Sri Lanka is home to 1,607,500 overseas Indians. Here is where to find Indian food, festivals and entertainment there. For the Indian embassy and NRI services, see NRI services in Sri Lanka.

Indian food

South Indian food is part of everyday Sri Lankan cooking, and Colombo has many South and North Indian restaurants. Jaffna's Tamil cooking, with its dosai, crab curry and palmyra sweets, is a cuisine of its own. In Colombo, Shanmugas on Ramakrishna Road, Wellawatte, serves South Indian meals.

Festivals and pilgrimages

Thai Pongal and Deepavali are public holidays. The 25-day festival of the Nallur Kandaswamy temple in Jaffna, each August, is one of the island's biggest Hindu festivals, and the hill country's Seetha Amman temple near Nuwara Eliya is one of the sites linked with the Ramayana. See Sri Lanka Tourism.

Culture and films

India's cultural centre in Colombo, the Swami Vivekananda Cultural Centre, holds classes and performances. Tamil and Hindi films are shown in Sri Lankan cinemas.

Overseas Indian figures: Ministry of External Affairs, as of January 2026.