The Tamils ( , or ), also known as the Tamilans, are a Dravidian ethnic group who speak Tamil as their mother tongue and trace their ancestry to the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, the Indian Union territory of Puducherry, or the Northern and Eastern Province of Sri Lanka. Tamil people with a population of about 77 million living around the world are one of the largest and oldest of the existing ethno-linguistic cultural groups of people in the modern world to exist without a state of their own. Tamils comprise 24.87% of the population in Sri Lanka, 5.91% in India, 5.83% in Mauritius, 5% of the population in Singapore and 5.7% of the population in Malaysia.