Non-Coercive or Voluntary Societies

There is a strange practice in Tamil Nadu of coercing women to retract statements if it happens to hurt public sensibilities. Pooja Bhatt sums it up rather nicely in this article.

What I find so strange is the deafening silence in the media - while they normally tend to have opinions on everything, how is it that they haven't thrown up a storm at this blatant coercion? Why does this appear more like a tennis match than an attack on civil liberties?

While politics is probably at the bottom of this mess, I'm a little hesitant to dismiss civil liberties as a casualty. Saying something controversial is not a problem (though, in this case, the people involved were saying sensible things). Rebuttals or protesting statements are also not a problem. However, slapping defamation suits saying the state of Tamil Nadu has been defamed is a problem.

This tactic baffles the mind. How does one defame a state? Some suits have accused the speakers of corrupting the innocent. There are so many better ways of doing that and they are actually being done by several cable TV channels each day. I wonder why no one talks about safeguards that protect children from inappropriate material - channels run programs without any sort of standardized rating system.

What I am surprised about our legal system is that frivolous charges like this are actually allowed in for non-zero lengths of time.

Where is the soul of the people that should have revolted against such base behavior? Does it have to come out only during an election?