Religious identity is the key source of today's global distrust and disharmony.
The Convert examines the paradoxes of religion: the compassion of Jesus, on the one hand, and the unspeakable cruelties of the Inquisition, on the other; the nonviolent truth of Gandhi versus the cussed bigotry of those who killed him.
The novel conducts this examination through the writerly investigations of Christopher. Born Brahmin and raised a Christian, Christopher discovers Dharmadhara who is born Brahmin but abandons it to pioneer a community guided by the credo: liberty, equality, fraternity. Compelled by episodes in early life, Dharmadhara ventures out to see the world for what it really is. Enduring a near-death experience, he his rescued by a people who have forever been kept out of a society dominated by his own people, the Brahmins. Temporary amnesia caused by a near-drowning event, gives him the relative freedom from the past to explore the inner lives of the people he is cast among. He follows an inner striving to found a new way of life based on love and caring.
The fate that befalls the commune is one of the lesser mysteries of the novel.
