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House of Annetta, a London-based community initiative focused on land ownership and spatial justice, has disinvited CK Janu, a prominent tribal leader from Kerala and an advocate for Adivasi land rights, citing her links to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Janu, who is on a visit to the United Kingdom, was invited by the House of Annetta, which defines itself as a space for learning about the ways in which ownership of land shapes people’s lives. They cancelled the event abruptly after some activists informed the group about Janu’s association with the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.
Janu, who is the chairperson of Adivasi Gotra Maha Sabha (AGMS), has led several significant land rights campaigns in Kerala including the 2001 protest, where thousands of Adivasis set up huts in front of the secretariat and the 2003 Muthanga land occupation that ended in brutal police violence.
The event – a talk by Janu – was scheduled to be held at their premises in East London on August 14, 2025. In an email to TNM, Fran Edgerley, director House of Annetta CIC, confirmed having deplatformed Janu as affiliation with the BJP was a red line for their members.
“House of Annetta is a project to advocate for spatial justice. Our community includes multiple generations of Bengali Muslims—they are our colleagues, our friends, our family, our neighbours. An important part of spatial justice, both in the UK and international contexts, is being firmly against Islamophobia. We can point to the CAA-NRC Bill, the bulldozing of Muslim people's homes, and relationships to the 2002 Gujarat violence as examples of BJP's Islamophobia. We will not platform or host political figures who are aligned with Islamophobic actors,” House of Annetta said in its response.
The email said they are also aware of the BJP's Operation Kagar and the loot and killings of Adivasis and revolutionaries in the jungles of Chhattisgarh, Odisha, and Jharkhand in India. “We will not platform or host political figures who are aligned with actors enforcing displacement of indigenous peoples,” the response said.
"After recently being informed of her repeated alliance with BJP, we have been unable to find any evidence of CK Janu having spoken out against either BJP’s treatment of Muslims or BJP’s dispossession of tribal people in Bastar,” the email response said.
The Janadhipathya Rashtriya Party (JRP), launched by CK Janu, joined the BJP-led NDA in 2016, and she unsuccessfully contested the 2016 state Assembly polls from Sulthan Bathery. The JRP left the NDA in 2018 but rejoined the alliance in 2021 ahead of the Kerala Legislative Assembly election.
Janu said she was not officially informed about the cancellation of the event but came to know about it through her friends. “It has not upset me at all. They did this because they have no understanding of the political reality in Kerala. I have no links to the BJP and have never been invited to or attended any of their official meetings. The only link is through JRP, which is an NDA alliance partner,” she said.
Janu has been in the UK for the past six months at the invitation of her activist friends and is set to return to Kerala on August 20. “I have been invited to speak on Adivasi land rights on the same date in London in another event on August 14,” she said.
Shafi Rahman, a journalist based in London, viewed the decision by House of Annetta to disinvite Janu as a failure of political imagination. “It’s a kind of soft censorship disguised as moral clarity. Calling CK Janu Islamophobic because she allied with the BJP is unfair and oversimplified,” he said.