RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND CONVERSION

old and opted for the new. This revolution known as the Renaissance, enabled the European nations to emerge from the medieval to the modern age of science. The truth is that the human mind is a treasure house of unlimited power. In normal situations the human brain remains in a dormant state. It is only external shocks which awaken it, and the greater they are the greater the intellectual revolution within man. This shock treatment produces in man what psychologists call brainstorming. This brings about an intellectual change, a conversion that elevates a normal man to the level of superman who is then able to perform great feats. Religious conversion is only a small part of this whole process. When the dialogue-conversion process is set in motion it cannot have limits set to it. It is not possible to allow one kind of conversion and to prohibit another. Being a stormy process, it is boundless. TWO KINDS OF RELIGIOUS CONVERSION It must be appreciated that there are two major kinds of religious conversion—innerfaith conversion and inter faith conversion. Let us take an example of inter-faith conversion. A multi-lingual Bengali Doctor of Philosophy, Nishi Kant Chattopadhyay, initially studied philosophy, then all major religions, faced intellectual confrontation with different faiths. Finally, he made an intellectual discovery, as a consequence of which he left his ancestral religion, in favour of Islam and changed his name to Azizuddin. He wrote a book, Why I have embraced Islam, which describes in detail the story of his intellectual development. Examples of inner-faith conversion are several. Men and women born in Muslim families later left their family religion to turn into secularists or even atheists in some cases. However, sooner or later they approached a turning point in their lives when they came back to Islam as sincere practicing Muslims. To sum up, conversion is a universal and inescapable law of nature. A study of psychology and history tells us that to give a new impetus to an individual or a group and to bring about a moral revolution, what is most effective is the sense of discovery. This feeling of having discovered some unknown truth, awakens the dormant powers of the In normal situations the human brain remains in a dormant state. It is only external shocks which awaken it, and the greater they are the greater the intellectual revolution within man.