ive on the friendliest footing without ever thinking of
marrying each other, I can see no difficulty in my daughter regarding
every Mahomedan brother and _vice versa_. I hold strong views on
religion and on marriage. The greater the restraint we exercise with
regard to our appetites whether about eating or marrying, the better we
become from a religious standpoint. I should despair of ever cultivating
amicable relations with the world, if I had to recognise the right or
the propriety of any young man offering his hand in marriage to my
daughter or to regard it as necessary for me to dine with anybody and
everybody. I claim that I am living on terms of friendliness with the
whole world. I have never quarrelled with a single Mahomedan or
Christian but for years I have taken nothing but fruit in Mahomedan or
Christian households. I would most certainly decline to eat food cooked
from the same plate with my son or to drink water out of a cup which his
lips have touched and which has not been washed. But the restraint or
the exclusiveness exercised in these matters by me has never affected
the closest companionship with the Mahomedan or the Christian friends
or my sons.

But interdining and intermarriage have never been a bar to disunion,
quarrels and worse. The Pandavas and the Kauravas flew at one another's
throats without compunction although they interdined and intermarried.
The bitterness between the English and the Germans has not yet died out.

The fact is that intermarriage and interdining are not necessary factors
in friendship and unity though they are often emblems thereof. But
insistence on either the one or the other can easily become and is
to-day a bar to Hindu-Mahomedan Unity. If we make ourselves believe that
Hindus and Mahomedans cannot be one unless they interdine or intermarry,
we would be creating an artificial barrier between us which it might be
almost impossible to remove. And it would seriously interfere with the
flowing unity between Hindus and Mahomedans if, for example, Mahomedan
youths consider it lawful to court Hindu girls. The Hindu parents will
not, even if they suspected any such thing, freely admit Mahomedans to
their homes as they have begun to do now. In my opinion it is necessary
for Hindu and Mahomedan young men to recognise this limitation.

I hold it to be utterly impossible for Hindus and Mahomedans to
intermarry and yet retain intact each other's religion. And the true
beauty of H