Making waves for justice's sake

Courageous leadership invigorates antislavery work

→en français. Photographed for Faith Today par Christopher Wahl

Anu George Canjanathoppil, chief executive officer of International Justice Mission (IJM) Canada, is used to making waves. At a podium she exudes confidence empowered by passion for her cause, with a kind of magnetic presence that makes it hard to look away. Her story-telling skills leave audiences simultaneously wanting more and squirming under the conviction of their own need to respond.

Following her talk at the National Prayer Breakfast in Ottawa in early May, Brian Stiller, global ambassador for the World Evangelical Alliance, summed up her impact. “Her messages left no room for any of us to escape the personal responsibility to foster justice in our own worlds.”

Since taking over the helm at IJM Canada in 2019, she’s become the international antislavery organization’s secret weapon, restructuring the 25-year-old nonprofit, travelling internationally to tell its stories and growing its revenues exponentially despite the tumultuous pandemic years.

At 40 and as a trained lawyer, Canjanathoppil admits she’s been rocking boats for decades, having first “discovered the power of the law” for bringing about justice while still a child in South Asia.

“It started as a pursuit for equality in water distribution when there was a season of water scarcity in South Asia,” she remembers. “The law became a tool to challenge those in power.”

She was only 13 when she boldly walked to a local official’s office and accused him of breaking the law by giving more water to wealthier communities. Soon neighbours began asking for her help fighting other injustices, sending her on a quest to learn about the powers of local officials in preparation for challenging them. “What started as a necessity became my path forward.”

Born into a devout family of Lutheran missionaries on her dad’s side and Orthodox Syrian Christians in South Asia on her mom’s side – a family that traces its faith back to the arrival of the apostle Thomas to South Asia in the first century – Canjanathoppil was reared and nourished on the stories of ancestors who remained faithful despite persecution.

PHOTO CAPTION: “One of the most humbling moments in my life came during a rescue operation where I could fit the entire possessions of a seven-member family into a single bag. That bag was smaller than the one I packed for an overnight trip. Since then I’ve learned to travel, pack and live lighter – both literally and figuratively.” PHOTO: IJM

“And these stories scripted my journey to understanding what it means to be a Christian,” she explains. The stories also continue to inspire everything from her work to her dress – when she appears in public her garment of choice is a sari.

Canjanathoppil wears the sari, she says, first “Because I wanted to be taken seriously, because it made me look older. I could not afford to be an ill-informed teenager in government offices while seeking justice. Then I wore it in my 20s to lead rescues for the same reason, but also because it connected me to the victims and survivors. That attire was familiar and connected our stories with that fabric, and then became my go-to because it deeply resonated with the culture I did not want to leave behind as I took the stage globally.”

But the sari is also her garment of choice because of her history, which is “tainted by bloodshed and sacrifice because my ancestors chose Christ.

“For me, the sari is a statement of choosing to honour my history and the quiet battle that needs to be fought by Christians globally,” she continues. “My great-grandfather was an indentured labourer in the early 1900s, and he witnessed forced conversions. In his letters to my grandmother, he told her that he was learning to separate Christ from the Christians who used faith to enslave and oppress people.

“I embrace my culture because, like my faith, it also needs to be protected from colonizing mindsets.”

Her loyalty to her family, faith, culture and the cause of justice for the world’s most vulnerable is best defined as fierce – an adjective friends and colleagues use liberally when describing her.

“My first impression of her was just, ‘Wow! Who is this young, dynamic, fiercely independent leader?’ ” remembers Joash Thomas, national director of mobilization and advocacy at IJM Canada.

He first met Canjanathoppil in 2015 when working as an intern with IJM in South Asia where she was then national director of casework partnerships. “This South Asian woman training South Asian law enforcement officers,” he explains, “in that culture, that context, leading teams of men and women, and fierce about her faith, but at the same time fierce about her love for neighbour.”

PHOTO CAPTION: “That moment, glaring at the officer who dared to claim slavery didn’t exist, fury surged through me. These families clung to survival with nothing but tarpaulin hammocks shielding their children from scorpions while the world debated resources and time. For them, it’s not about convenience – it’s life or death. We take our comfort, our choices, for granted. The urgency I carry comes from this truth – while we debate if we have time, they’re out of it.” PHOTO: IJM

Her supervisor at the time Daniel Ajoy Varghese, who leads IJM’s work in South Asia, agrees that she is both a courageous woman and an influential leader. He remembers accompanying her to a rescue of over a hundred bonded labourers on one occasion.

“She spoke to the person in charge of the district administration and was compelling in her presentation,” he writes in an email. “Despite knowing that the location was prone to violence and high risk, Anu’s persuasive approach, legal knowledge and won’t-take-no-for-an-answer approach led to directing one of the biggest rescues in one of the toughest areas in the state supported by armed police.”

To understand Canjanathoppil’s passion it is important to know about more than her loyalty to family, faith and culture. What fires her in her quest to deliver victims of poverty and injustice from the violence of their lives is that she too is a survivor of violence.

While she will not disclose contextual details – the who, when, where or how – she tells of being physically attacked on two occasions while still in her early 20s. The second attack led to her being paralyzed and bedridden for almost a year, and with severe memory loss that haunts her to this day. That second attack became one of those life-dividing lines, a major marker after which everything is remembered in terms of happening before or since.

To that point she had been a successful lawyer, well educated with multiple degrees, a marathon runner. But lying in bed, “Staring at the ceiling for days and nights and months together, I couldn’t do anything but think. It was a very humbling place to be. What that experience did was give me a severe awareness that I was not alone [in being a victim of violence]. And I did not want it to define my story.”

In what she describes as an “extremely spiritual” experience, she realized from that time forward there was nowhere to go but up, that her life would have to consist of rebuilding. She sensed God answering prayer and telling her that her story was not over. “Being a survivor gives you a strange kind of power that took away the fear. How could I not respond to injustice around me?”

As she slowly began to get back on her feet, a former employer nominated her for a Sauvé Fellowship at McGill University in Montreal – an opportunity she won for 2010–2011, which brought together scholars from around the world for a year of intensive leadership training through living and studying together.

“The timing of this fellowship was perfect,” Canjanathoppil remembers. “I could go to a place where the starting point for my interactions would be my imperfections. No one was going to judge me because it was the only version of me that they knew.”

Lilit Simonyan, cofounder of LYP (Live Your Potential), a leadership and development program for women, was part of the same cohort of Sauvé Fellows. On her first morning in the Montreal mansion where the Fellows lived together, she recalls meeting Canjanathoppil in the common kitchen.

“She said, ‘Are you hungry? Have you had any food?’ ” Canjanathoppil proceeded to show Simonyan around the space. “My first impression was that care. She surrounded me with care.”

The two would go on to become dear friends, and Simonyan says from the beginning she thought of Canjanathoppil as “this colourful, cheerful, happy and very energetic person who was full of life. As I got to know her more, she knew my secrets, I knew her secrets.”

Canjanathoppil was still in Montreal when she first heard about the work of International Justice Mission, seeing a job opening for an assistant’s position. She remembers crying when learning about the organization whose mission statement reads, “To protect people in poverty from violence by rescuing victims, bringing criminals to justice, restoring survivors to safety and strength, and helping local law enforcement build a safe future that lasts.”

“I knew I’d found my perfect job,” she explains. “But I just was not good enough anymore to meet those requirements. I wished I had seen this job before my episode of violence. I was not sure if a battered woman could pick up the pieces and function like before.”

She applied for the position and was rejected. But she continued to apply “for every opportunity in every part of the world that IJM was advertising for,” and eventually secured a position with IJM in South Asia as director of legal.

“I was not my resume when I joined IJM,” she says. As a result, she is clear that from that day to this her achievements have not been hers alone. She is convinced God is in this work. “I just know. That gives me tremendous courage because it’s not on my own strength.”

Those achievements to date have been significant – over 10,000 people rescued by her team in South Asia within a few years, with millions impacted as a result of IJM’s partnership work.

Since returning to Canada, she has transformed the organization in fulfilment of the mandate given to her by IJM’s board.

PHOTO CAPTION: “What began as a rescue has grown into a thriving, hopeful community. Victims have become victors, and a village has been reborn. I remember when their only meal was stale rice with water and chili powder. Now they are entrepreneurs, workers and living with dignity. This is the power of liberation – one act of justice rippling into the unimaginable. We couldn’t do this without our partners – donors, churches and Christians – who stand for justice, knowing that Jesus is synonymous with it. PHOTO: IJM

“She is a transformational, pioneering, innovative leader,” says her colleague Joash Thomas. “To the point that her innovativeness can sometimes scare people – whether it’s people she leads or people providing leadership to her – because God has uniquely wired her in that way, to see possibilities that others don’t.

“It’s a fierce love of Jesus and a fierce love of neighbour at the same time,” he explains. “Anu is by far the best storyteller we have at IJM because our work is so personal to her. Anyone who’s ever heard her speak knows that this work is really personal to her. She just brings her full self to the work and it shows.”

For her part Canjanathoppil concedes, “I’ve been known to rock far too many boats.” But making waves can obviously be a good thing when Christ is your captain.

Ask her about our nation’s progress on addressing modern-day slavery since she arrived in this country and she is quick to respond. “A lot of things have changed,” she says. “I think we have had a 180-degree switch from where we were to where we are today. We are on a great path right now. And I am fully convinced that Canada is going to be the country that is going to show the other countries how it is done to end slavery in our lifetime.”

Patricia Paddey of Winnipeg is a senior writer at Faith Today. Canjanathoppil is writing a book readers can hear about at IJM.ca/Anu-Book.