“Don’t give a hundred reasons why a problem cannot be solved. Instead, use your imagination to move forward in the only way you know how to solve the problem. That one decision opens up a dawn. More than two decades have passed since we began our work to end sex trafficking. When we started this work, we did not know how far we would travel… We started our journey with no financial resources or support. We trusted only our faith and integrity to show us the way forward. As the demands of our work grew, so did our efforts. It’s not easy to keep moving forward with the same initiative we had when you started… One step forward is followed by twenty steps backwards. Time will test our resilience. However, we are not discouraged.”
Some eternal light (Prajwala means eternal flame) guides us from somewhere. Despite all the hesitations and turmoil, we were never once forced to give up our efforts. That ‘something’ keeps driving us. Sometimes that ‘something’ is people’s support or our children, or the achievements of rescued girls. But Most of the time, that ‘something’ seems to be the ‘smiles’ of the people we have rescued… We, who have full faith in the humanitarian spirit, will continue to fight to create a safer world for women and children…” – Sunitha Krishnan
Dr. Sunitha Krishnan is an Indian social activist. She is the founder and principal activist of Prajwala, an organisation that saves, rescues and rehabilitates women and children subjected to sexual violence and slavery. Prajwala means eternal flame. The organisation has also provided educational assistance to more than 5000 children affected by AIDS.
Sunitha Krishnan was born and brought up in Bangalore. She studied in Central government schools in Bangalore and Bhutan. Her father worked in the survey department, making maps of the whole of India. So, travelling with his father from one place to another, she had the opportunity to see most of the country in her youth.
After completing her BA in Environmental Science from St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore, she completed her MSW (Medicine and Psychiatry) in Mangalore. When she started teaching dance to mentally challenged children at the age of eight, her passion for social work naturally emerged in her. By the age of twelve, she was running schools for underprivileged children in the slums.
At the age of fifteen, while working on a new literacy campaign for the Dalit community, Sunitha Krishnan was sexually assaulted by eight men. They did not want a woman to interfere or stand up in this male-centred society. They assaulted Sunita so badly that she became deaf in one ear. It was this incident… that inspired Sunita to become uncompromisingly active in the social arena today.
In 1996, sex workers living in Mehboob Ki Mehndi, a red-light district in Hyderabad, were evicted. As a result, thousands of women caught in the clutches of prostitution were rendered homeless. Sunitha Krishnan, along with her friend Jose, started a secondary school in an empty brothel to prevent the next generation of girls from being trafficked for prostitution. In the early days, she had to sell her jewellery and even most household utensils to run the school.
Today, the Prajwala organization stands on the five pillars – prevention of trafficking, rescue, rehabilitation, reintegration and advocacy – fighting against violence against women and children. This organization strives to provide moral justice, financial assistance, legal and social support to the victims. Also, this system ensures that criminals are brought to justice. To date, Prajwala has saved, rescued, rehabilitated and served more than 12,000 survivors of sex trafficking. The length and breadth of their activities have made them the largest anti-trafficking organization in the world today.
To rescue children of prostituted mothers from that profession, the organization’s ‘Second Generation Prevention Program’ is running in 17 intermediate centres. This prevents thousands of children of prostituted mothers from entering the flesh trade. Sunitha also runs a shelter for rescued children and women victims of sex trafficking. Many of them are affected by the HIV disease. Sunitha Krishnan heads an economic rehabilitation program that not only rescues them from sex work, but also trains survivors in carpentry, welding, printing, construction and housekeeping. She has been the target of 14 murderous attacks and threats due to her work in the recovery of many women and minors who have been subjected to sexual violence. Once, when she was travelling in an auto rickshaw, a Sumo vehicle rammed into her auto in an attempt to kill her.
Prajwala organization has more than 200 employees. But Sunitha Krishnan runs the organization as a full-time volunteer. It was a decision she made early in her career. Sunita is married to Indian film producer, art director and screenwriter Mr. Rajesh Touchriver. With the help of her husband, Sunitha manages her financial needs by writing books and giving lectures and seminars around the world on women trafficking. One of her husband’s films, Anamika, a short film, is now part of the National Police Academy curriculum. Another film, Naa Bangaru Talli, won 3 National Awards in 2014.
In 2009, Sunitha Krishnan gave a TED talk on the cause of human trafficking at the Infosys campus in Mysore. On the Internet, it reached over 2.5 million viewers worldwide. In July 2012, Sunitha spoke on the television show ‘Satyameva Jayate’ hosted by Aamir Khan, which led various business owners willing to provide employment opportunities to sex trafficking survivors to join the Prajwala organization. In 2016, Sunitha Krishnan was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest honours. Apart from that, she and her organization, Prajwala, have been given many international awards.
In her own words – “When I started, I was left nauseous and shocked by the sight of 15-year-old victims. Today, I am not surprised even when it is a 5-year-old victim.”
“One particular thing that irks me – and this is a general comment, to make myself clearer – is when people get caught up with the starting point of my journey. They make it as if my entire journey, my aspirations, and my dreams are all about that one incident. The other day, there was an article, it was fantastically written, but its title was “Rape Survivor Takes On Technology Firms”. It belittles the journey I and others like me have gone through.”
“I’m not asking you all to become Mahatma Gandhi’s or Martin Luther King’s or Medha Patkar’s or something like that…..
I’m asking you; in your limited world, can you open your minds? Can you open your hearts? Can you just encompass these people, too? Because they are also a part of us. They are also part of this world.
I’m asking you for these children; whose faces you see, they’re no more! They died of AIDS last year.
I’m asking you to help them; to accept them as human beings, not as philanthropy, not as charity, but as human beings who deserve all our support. I’m asking you this because no child, no human being, deserves what these children have gone through.” – Dr Sunitha Krishnan, co-founder, Prajwala.
Indian activist ‘Sunitha Krishnan’, who has been leading the anti-trafficking and livelihood services of children and women for twenty-five years, participated in Cuckoo’s live chat, Cuckoo Conversations on 21.05.2020. She must have heard thousands of painful stories from the people she met. But it was Sunita’s hands which changed the end of those thousand stories into a beginning of hope rather than a sad ending. Her sharing will ignite and burn in our hearts the same eternal flame that burns in her. Rather than being a reason for inaction, her life story gives us a call for action.