Sunitha Krishnan: “There is nothing more horrendous than sex trafficking”

The co-founder of Prajwala, one of the largest organisations fighting sex trafficking, talks about her memoir, I Am What I Am

What led you to write your memoir.

Activist and author Sunitha Krishnan (Courtesy Westland)

Two instances in late 2021, perhaps, were the compelling triggers to start writing my memoir. The first one was the reaction of all the people at my father’s memorial after reading his autobiography. Unanimously they were astonished to read my father’s accomplishments and adventures and kept saying “We did not know Raju Krishnan was such a great man”. This stuck a raw nerve. I knew I did want people to say such things at my memorial. If I have done anything worthwhile, I want to be appreciated when I am alive not when I am dead and gone. The second instance happened a month later when someone claiming to be a Bollywood producer called me and told me about a script that was going to be my biopic. On questioning where he had found material for his script, he replied that he had googled me and prepared it. This was the final straw. I decided that I had to tell my truth and in a way that I am comfortable with; something that will go permanently on record and not allow all kinds of stories that are available online to become my truth.

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How did your childhood and family environment shape your resilience and social causes?

I do not think my family environment played any role to shape my resilience or my involvement in social causes. Life directions or whatever thought processes I had — that I have to be useful to the world — came on my own. I come from a lower middle-class family. In my world, everybody was taking care of their own only. The focus was survival. My father, a first-generation learner, was concerned about taking care of his siblings. The question of what was happening to the community or society did not arise as they were caught up in their day-to-day struggle.

You showed leadership qualities from an early age in teaching neighbourhood kids, especially the marginalised ones. When you were gang-raped at the age of 15, it gave you a direction to act on. Please talk about that.

As I said, I had no background that spoke about taking care of those who were underprivileged. Strangely, it was the inner guiding force for me to look at the world from a very early age. I was teaching children who were more underprivileged than us. That kind of made me somebody different in the family. Everybody would say, look at her she is very different, she is doing so much for others. At that time, it acted as a big sense of credit. For the first 15 years of my life, I lived with that little halo of being a noble soul. I was acknowledged for my work, recognised for it. I was also a good student, I was fantastic in extracurricular activities except for sports. My quest for doing something for others slowly evolved into a better shape. By the time I was eight years old, I was teaching dance to intellectually challenged children. By the age of 12, I was actually running a learning centre, I was teaching children. By the time I was 15, I was a hardcore doer.

So, when an incident to this effect happened, I think, for the first time, I experienced rejection. Till then what people thought was great became not so great after that. It became, ‘Why did you give her so much freedom? Why did you allow her to go? Why was she going around like that?’ Everything that people appreciated earlier became the reason I was blamed for. This was also the first time that I consciously understood that if a sex crime happens to a person, everything changes. You are no longer a person of worth. You are unworthy of anybody’s love, and acceptance. Everybody’s trying to put that entire act of the crime on you: “You were roaming around that is why this happened to you”. But for me this was a transformative phase for it is this ostracization and rejection that gave direction to my life. If that had not happened, I would still be doing developmental work, maybe in the space of education or rural development. But that incident gave me the direction.

The development sector was clearly my destination. But what in the sector became clear only after that incident. That’s when I thought I wanted to work on sex crime. I thought prostitution as the worst form of sex crime. And then ending sex slavery and sex trafficking became the core of my existence.

In I Am What I Am, you write about the systemic challenges that hinder anti-trafficking efforts. What is one truth about trafficking in India that you think every reader should know?

There are several truths. But one profound truth everybody should know is that human trafficking is the worst form of human rights violation that a human being can be subjected to. There is nothing more horrendous than the sex trafficking of a person. I use the term sex trafficking more specifically than human trafficking.

You discuss the challenges of changing societal attitudes towards survivors. Please elaborate on the strategies you’ve found most effective in shifting perceptions?

Three strategies have helped me. One, the more the survivor becomes skilled and starts gaining acceptance for their skills, this labelling is reduced. I can’t say it goes away. Even a person like me, who has accomplished so much in the work that I do, is constantly labelled. People are not concerned about the fact that I run one of the largest organisations in the world fighting sex crime, they are more concerned about my rape. The fact that I am a domain expert in this doesn’t come into it. Constantly, my work is reduced to my being a survivor. It happens. But over a period of time, it is diluted when you create an identity based on your skills.

The second thing that can be a game changer is the way we project survivors in our stories and content — whether visual or in print. How do we visualise a survivor? Do we want to see a person who is hiding her face? Then, stories of pain and fear — is that the kind of image you want to create? A lot of thought perception changes through the content we are generating.

The third very important aspect is shifting the focus onto the perpetrator. We need to start fixing shame where it belongs. Right now, we have invested all our energy on fixing shame on the person who has been subjected to the crime. The person who committed the crime should be the custodian of shame. If we, as a very mindful collective, shift the shame where it belongs — if parents can say to their son, if you do this then you are bringing shame to the family — it would be a big change. We should stop talking about the kalankini and talk about the kalank instead.

What do you feel about the glamourisation of prostitution and of tawaif culture in Hindi cinema?

All this is, in my opinion, a collective conspiracy to legitimise sex crimes. Everybody is finding different ways to ensure we legitimise this and therefore the best way to do it is by glamourising — creating a big legitimate look about it. It’s so easy to do that in the name of empowerment, and saying, “Everybody does it by choice so let’s give licenses, let’s register them; it’s a person’s self-determination to choose what happens to her body.” All these are different ways that people have tried to normalise centuries-old patriarchal norms of suppression and of vilifying female sexuality.

Many assume that rescuing survivors is the toughest part and that’s where the battle ends. You go ahead and talk about rehabilitation. What are some of Prajwala’s challenges in rehabilitating survivors?

There are two words to be mindful of: victim and survivor. These are two phases in the same person’s life. We are not rescuing survivors; we are rescuing victims. The journey supporting a victim to see herself, recover, gain her dignity, and believe in a future for herself is a journey that teaches her to be a survivor. This is what we call rehabilitation.

The entire process of creating that enabling environment is about counselling, healthcare, deaddiction, and detoxification. It is also about giving them education, training, and employability skills. So, at one stage, a person who is completely broken slowly starts picking up her life, and rebuilding herself. She is doing everything. We are just creators of an enabling space with the recognition that a trauma-informed approach means understanding what she has gone through and slowly building up something around her so she gains the confidence and trust to start seeing herself better.

Gaining that confidence not only to deal with her own life but to deal with the whole world on a daily basis is what rehabilitation means to us.

Prajwala’s efforts and advocacy towards anti-trafficking have led to many significant policies in India. What future legal reforms do you believe are essential to combat sex trafficking more effectively?

We have a long way to go. The first and most important is binding comprehensive legislation. It is critical that India, as a country, have a comprehensive legislation to fight sex-trafficking. It should be looked at in the context of interstate, intra-state and around 8-10% cross border. Look at our regional divisions, and create an institutional mechanism that allows the crime to be tackled at all these levels. The law should also ensure victim protection as a matter of entitlement. It is her right to rehabilitation. The government isn’t going to be doing a favour; it should be a right to seek that support. This statutory provision is the need of the hour, something we haven’t yet received. We have got parts of it in BNS (Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita) today, in Section 370 of IPC in 2013, but nothing has come in comprehensive measure.

What do you have to say to readers inspired by your journey who want to be a part of social change?

I Am What I Am is a book about possibilities and hope that gives you the understanding that if you decide to do something, then the sky is the limit. This book is about the journey of one individual and her conviction to change something in the world. It will provide ideas about what I tried and where I failed.

So, for all those who want to do things, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. You can learn from my mistakes. Possibilities are not about going into a field to do something big but to do things differently in your everyday life. For example, even the content you post on your social media handles could bring social change. The important thing is to find ways mindfully within the limitations of your responsibilities and liabilities.

Believe me, you don’t need to be a social activist today to bring that change. If you can just see what you have within you and direct it back, there is a lot of good you can do. If nothing else, if you are a parent and you bring up your children to respect human beings, and your sons to respect women and indoctrinate them that abusing or raping a woman is a matter of great shame, that the family and society will look down upon them if they even think about those things, that itself is the greatest contribution to humanity. Somewhere then you would have contributed to the safety of women and children across the world.

When your family is safe, you also build safe communities. When safe communities happen, safe countries happen.

Akankshya Abismruta is an independent writer.