Financial Times - Terrorism has not ceased to outrage business

A recent opinion survey, conducted by The Sunday Times FT, found that an increasing number of businessmen and their attendant professionals are opposed to gratifying terrorism with negotiations.

Such a finding might seem obvious and trite when viewed out of context. However, a short view of the context makes plain that the finding is in fact suggestive of a profound change in the moral outlook of business.

Conventional wisdom would suggest that business may find it impractical to be morally outraged at terrorism.

After all, given the inevitable economic decline that would follow the assumption of a combative posture against terrorism and the consequent increase in the LTTE’s homicidal bombings, business would be expected to pray for peace at any cost.

Yet, in spite of such obvious anxieties, which came across clearly in the survey, a large percentage of the respondents said that there should be no negotiations with the LTTE, whose ressentiment (a psychological state resulting from suppressed feelings of envy and hatred that cannot be satisfied) has spawned a bewildering variety of homicidal bombers and elitist grievance-mongers or NGOs.

It was an informal survey, limited to better-known players in business. But as reported by the paper the respondents had the opportunity to remark freely and many had availed themselves of it enthusiastically.

Whatever underlying reasons we may attribute to business’ growing hard line attitude towards the LTTE, in effect the message is one of willingness to face self-sacrifice for the sake of a common future and for the dignity of being a Sri Lankan.

Such a willingness, according to the paper, ran across the generational divide and came from those in choice positions.

This is clearly a novel element, and one out of character for business here, which has historically tended towards a narrowly pragmatic creed.

Success often carries with it the effect of loosening one’s ties to the nation state. And we are often led to feel that our success and our virtue have been realised independent of the nation from which we have derived both our very existence and our ideals – especially if our ideals are defined in opposition to those which the nation traditionally cherishes.

At most, we might be inclined to revere our families, but in the measure we are successful the tendency particularly here is to develop a sense of individuality that is devoid of any feeling of national destiny, reverence and pride.

That is why it is a remarkable thing to witness businessmen and their professionals opposing the idea of gratifying the LTTE with negotiations.

When either a progressive or a grievance-monger, who in a rather hedonistic fashion feels deeply for the suffering of others, says that the terrorists are victims of majoritarian rule and prejudices, he is only guilty of social science – of conflating the issue of grievance and the use of violence to terrorise civilians into moral disintegration.

However, when an eminent business leader, for whom both the sanctity of the nation state and the indignity of making peace with the LTTE carry very little meaning, urges others to sacrifice their feelings of reverence and honour to arrive at a negotiated solution to terrorism, he is guilty of injustice.

For it is unjust to suggest that others sacrifice more than what one is actually seen to be sacrificing – in this instance for peace.

Moreover, it is both undemocratic and futile to dismiss the feeling of reverence that others might have for the nation state. And it is dishonest to commend to others a course of action to follow without a full disclosure of the sacrifices one would peronally have to make, if that course of action was followed.

The public, for the sake of a better future, might actually favour a policy that seeks to effect a settlement to terrorism that legitimises in some measure the control of the country by the separatist thugs who have been terrorizing in the hope of humbling or morally crippling the nation into submission. But let us not be so elitist as to believe that a democracy lacks the wisdom to weigh the value and the cost of peace.

Moreover, let us not obfuscate the weighing by providing a false choice of either war or negotiations.

A policy of containment is just as real as either war or negotiations in effecting a final settlement to terrorism, especially when such a policy involves gaining the active cooperation of the US intelligence services to frustrate the flow of money and arms to the LTTE - now that Canada and EU have banned the LTTE.

The perseverance to defeat terrorism is the recognition that there are conditions under which life or success is not worth having.

Frankly, it is inspiring to know that there are successful Sri Lankans who are concerned with honour on such a grand scale to vehemently oppose effecting a final settlement to terrorism through negotiations.