The bedrock difficulty is that Indian customs prevent any kind of intimacy between English and Indian families. Even in England the relations between men who are excluded from acquaintance with each other's families can rarely be called intimate, and except in the very few cases of Indian families that are altogether Westernized, Indian habits rigidly exclude Englishmen from admission into the homes of Indian gentlemen, whether Hindu or Mahomedan. Intercourse between Indian and English ladies is in the same way almost entirely confined to formal visits paid by the latter to the zenana and the harem, and to so-called _Purdah_ parties, given in English houses, in which Indian ladies are entertained as far as possible under the same conditions that prevail in their own homes--i.e., to the total exclusion of all males. So long as Indian ladies are condemned to a life of complete seclusion the interests they have in common with their English visitors must necessarily be very few. On the other hand, it is not surprising that Englishmen, knowing the views that many Indian men entertain with regard to the position of women, do not care to encourage them to visit their own houses on a footing of intimacy that would necessarily bring them into more or less familiar contact with their English wives and sisters and daughters. There is very much to admire in the family relations, and especially in the filial relations, that exist in an Indian home, whether Hindu or Mahomedan, but it is idle to pretend that Indian ideas with regard to the relations between the sexes are the same as ours. In these circumstances any social fusion between even the better classes of the two races seems to be for the present out of the question.