What does it mean to be Muslim in India? What does it mean to look like one’s religion? Does one’s faith determine how one is perceived? Is there a secular ideal one is supposed to live up to? Can people of different faiths have a shared culture, a shared identity? India has, since time immemorial, been plural, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-lingual, where various streams have fed into and strengthened each other and where dissimilarities have always been a cause for rejoicing rather than strife. These writings, on and about being Muslim in India, by Rakhshanda Jalil – one of the country’s foremost literary historians and cultural commentators – excavate memories, interrogate dilemmas, and rediscover and celebrate a nation and its syncretic culture. But You Don’t Look Like a Muslim is a book that every thinking Indian must read.