Activist Sunitha Krishnan On The Emotional Cost Of Fighting Sex Trafficking

For nearly three decades, Sunitha Krishnan has been at the forefront of India’s fight against sex trafficking, confronting violence, organised crime, and deep social stigma. She is the founder of Prajwala (founded 1996), a non-profit organisation that rescues and rehabilitate survivors.

In her autobiographyI Am What I Am: A Memoir, Krishnan opens a deeply personal window into that journey, revealing not only the systems she fought, but the emotional truths she carried within herself.

Writing the memoir forced her to confront something she had not fully acknowledged earlier.

“I think the bitterness I carried about all those human beings who had tried to harm me or hurt me or obstruct my mission was something new for me,” she said. 

For years, she believed she had resolved her anger and pain. But the act of writing revealed otherwise. "Only when I started writing did I realise that I had carried a lot of angst against so many people," she shared. 

"The process of writing for me also was the process of letting go of this anger and this angst against people." - Sunitha Krishnan.

That reckoning, she explained, helped her reach clarity on what she wanted the world to truly understand about her work and her life.

Survivors, Systems, and the Illusion of Support

According to Sunitha Krishnan, one of the most damaging myths around sex trafficking lies in how society views survivors.

“A big part of society continues to look at a woman as being responsible for the crime,” she said. Even when people use words like victim or survivor, she believes they often do not mean it.

“Somewhere, she asked for it. Somewhere she liked it,” she explained. Beneath the language of sympathy lies a belief that there was no real exploitation or violence. “That’s not what they really believe,” she said. As a result, the word survivor itself becomes hollow.

Krishnan is equally critical of institutional responses to trafficking. While the law now defines trafficking as an organised crime, she believes the Indian state has failed to build systems that reflect that reality.

“The institutional framework that is required to tackle an organised crime is not there in India,” she said.

On the ground, trafficking is still treated as a social or moral issue, not as a criminal network operating across regions. Anti Human Trafficking Units, she pointed out, lack real investigative power.

“The definition has come into the law, but for that definition to become action, that system has not yet come up,” she said.

Rescue, she emphasised, is often misunderstood as the final goal. “Rehabilitation is a very, very long process of psychological healing,” she explained.

It involves reclaiming dignity, rebuilding confidence, and slowly acquiring life skills, identity documents, education, and livelihoods.

Most importantly, it involves healing from trauma. “It is not about taking somebody out from a place of exploitation and putting them in a shelter,” she said.

Real rehabilitation requires curated, trauma-informed services that go far beyond temporary safety.

Resilience, Burnout, and the Road Ahead

Witnessing extreme violence daily can easily lead to burnout. For Krishnan, survival in this work depends on professionalism.

“It is very important to separate the problem from the person,” she said. Without this boundary, constant exposure to trauma can become overwhelming.

Her own grounding comes from spirituality, self-compassion, and everyday normalcy. “I love cooking. I love reading romantic novels. I love my me time,” she said. These routines, she explained, help her remain rooted and emotionally balanced.

Her idea of resilience has also evolved. “Resilience is a constant reserve of the extraordinary, what I call shakti, within,” she said. She has seen this power not only in herself, but in every survivor she has worked with.

“The endeavour is to help the person see inside within you for that support,” she explained. What has moved her most is the generosity survivors show after immense suffering.

“The more a victim becomes a survivor, her resilience combined with her compassion becomes an extraordinary form of generosity of the spirit.”

Looking at younger generations engaging with feminism today, Krishnan feels they are articulate but impatient. “This generation does not seem to have the patience to engage deeper,” she said.

Gendered violence, she stressed, cannot be understood without long-term engagement and historical context.

After nearly thirty years, she does not believe the trafficking ecosystem has improved. “I don’t think much has changed for the better,” she said.

Technology has made traffickers more anonymous and exploitation harder to identify. Narratives of consent, she warned, are increasingly used to blur accountability.

“In the years to come, it is going to be more difficult to deal with this problem,” she said.

Yet, despite the growing complexity and the emotional cost, Sunitha Krishnan continues the fight. Her memoir, like her life’s work, reminds us that justice is slow, healing is long, and resilience is not loud. It is built quietly, inch by inch, from within.