Sri Lanka, Aug. 20 -- A new Pew Research Center survey of public opinion in South Asia has turned up an unusual result: Sri Lanka is the only country in the region that India, Pakistan and Bangladesh all view more favourably than unfavourably. Those three countries rarely agree on much when it comes to each other. On Sri Lanka, they do.

Pew researchers Jacob Poushter, Sneha Gubbala and William Miner surveyed 3,566 people in India, 1,039 in Pakistan, 1,044 in Bangladesh and 2,513 in Sri Lanka between February 8 and May 7, 2026. The goal was to measure how the region's largest countries see each other. What came back was a map of old rivalries, with Sri Lanka sitting apart from most of them.

Sri Lanka is the exception in a region of riva...