Words Twisted, Truth Restored: Debunking the Dalada Perahera Claim Against Deputy Minister Eranga

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With the Esala and Dalada Perahera season under way, a claim spread fast across social media: that Deputy Minister of Urban Development Eranga Gunasekara had said the Dalada Perahera’s street procession should be stopped and confined to the Temple of the Tooth alone. Carried on a card bearing a newspaper’s logo, it drew sharp reactions in a religiously sensitive moment. We investigated. Here is what we found.

Social Media Posts:

Facebook | Archived Link

Related posts also circulated further on social media, as follows:

Fact-Check:

The viral post carried The Morning newspaper’s official logo, so we first checked whether it had been published on The Morning’s official social media accounts. We found no such post on any of The Morning’s official accounts.

Had the deputy minister genuinely made such a statement, other mainstream outlets would certainly have reported it. Our investigation confirmed that no mainstream media outlet has reported Deputy Minister Eranga Gunasekara calling for an end to the Dalada Perahera’s street procession, as the post claimed.

The photograph of the deputy minister used in the post is, in fact, from footage of him speaking to journalists after an event in Colombo on 27 March 2025, during which he made no statement whatsoever about the Dalada Perahera. In that statement he discussed several matters concerning Sri Lanka’s political situation, economic direction, and government transparency. The full statement is below.

The Post Was Fabricated from His Answer About a Northern Perahera Proposal

Esala Perahera festivals centered on the country’s sacred Buddhist sites are held in July and August each year, with the Dalada Maligawa’s Esala Perahera foremost among them. Against this backdrop, a journalist asked Deputy Minister Eranga Gunasekara at a media briefing about a proposal to hold an Esala Perahera in the north. The social media posts appear to have been fabricated from his response to that question.

Our investigation found that the source was a statement the Deputy Minister made at a media briefing organized by the Socialist Youth Union (SYU) under the theme “A Bond That Unites Hearts,” held at the JVP headquarters in Pelawatte on 22 July 2026. The briefing’s main purpose was to inform the media about a series of nationwide programmes commemorating the “Black July” of 1983. Throughout, the Deputy Minister spoke about matters relating to Black July, and at the end journalists were given a chance to ask questions.

At that point, a journalist asked: “A certain group has stated that an Esala Perahera should be held in the north for the sake of ethnic reconciliation.” The Deputy Minister replied:

“All ethnic communities, Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim, and others, must preserve their own cultural identities, and one community’s cultural practice must never become a source of obstruction, distress, or discomfort for another. That is what coexistence truly means.”

Examined in full context, his remarks were not directed at Esala or Dalada Perahera festivals across the country as a whole, but specifically at the proposal to hold an Esala Perahera in the north.

The Deputy Minister’s full response to the question is below.

“This is how we, as a government, see it: Sinhalese, Tamils, Burghers, Muslims, Malays, everyone must come together, and each community must preserve its own cultural identity. We must stand up for that. But at the same time, we do not believe we should choose actions that would let one community’s cultural practice become an obstruction, a source of distress, or discomfort for another. That is what coexistence means. That is what Sinhala–Tamil–Muslim–Burgher–Malay brotherhood means. But, as you mentioned, there are political forces in this country, defeated yet not destroyed, that have in the past exploited racism in various forms: through religion, through the guise of war heroes, and through various slogans. They make certain attempts along these lines. As a government, the relevant institutions will take decisions on such matters accordingly.”

The full video of the media briefing is below.

Deputy Minister of Urban Development Eranga Gunasekara also published a post on his official Facebook page, stating that the circulating claim has no truth to it whatsoever.

Facebook

Deputy Minister of Urban Development Eranga Gunasekara

When we contacted his office, Deputy Minister Eranga Gunasekara’s media secretary also confirmed that the Deputy Minister had made no statement claiming the Dalada Perahera’s street procession should be stopped and confined to the Temple of the Tooth alone, nor that doing so would appease Kandy’s Muslim community. 

He said the social media posts are entirely false and noted that the Deputy Minister had published, on his official Facebook page, the original journalist’s question from the 22 July briefing and his actual response as clarification, available here, and confirmed that a formal complaint about the fabricated post had been filed with the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) that day.

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Conclusion:

Our fact-check shows that the post circulating on social media, claiming Deputy Minister Eranga Gunasekara said the Dalada Perahera’s street procession should be stopped and confined to the Temple alone, is entirely fabricated. The Deputy Minister made no such statement. His remarks at the 22 July media briefing concerned a separate proposal to hold an Esala Perahera in the north and were twisted out of context to create the false post.