Umar Khalid is arrested not because he is a Muslim. He is under detention because he does not wear his Muslim identity on his sleeves. He remains incarcerated not because he protested against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) but because he was agitated about what is happening to the tribals in central India and was resisting the damage being done to the economy that was emaciating the working poor. It is Muslims like Umar who expose the limits of the majoritarian politics, not by essentialising their Muslim identity but reminding us of questions of justice that need to be placed in a larger context that foreground our interdependent existence. Umar was not foregrounding the question of citizenship when he was resisting the National Register of Citizens (NRC) but when he began to speak on behalf of those much lesser privileged than him. He was not one of those Muslims who said how I can speak of others when I am myself a victim, rather he understood the link between impoverishment of others as a preparatory ground to undermine Muslims’ claim to citizenship. He spoke as a Muslim for all others, and yet reminded us of the multiple identities we carry. To fight for the justice of all others he was a Muslim, to fight for the rights of the Muslims he was a non-believer. He wasn’t Muslim enough and that makes the project of a hegemonic majoritarianism look like a misdirected project. It provokes the question if majoritarianism is not just against the minorities but against the majority of people. It holds a mirror to the claims majoritarianism makes on behalf of the majority.Umar is not a Muslim who can be dragged into a debate whether he has the right to scream ‘Allah o Akbar’ to defend himself against the predatory sense of invoking Jai Shree Ram. He would instead prefer to invoke Bhagat Singh and Ambedkar. He would rather defend a puncture wala, not because it signifies a quintessential identity of a Muslim but because he symbolises the poor and the impoverished lot who continue to live below the poverty line. A poor Muslim cannot gain mobility by asserting as a Muslim but asserting as a Muslim against the neoliberal global order.Also read: Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, and The Moral Arc of the UniverseThe problem with Umar for the current regime is his refusal to be constrained within a Muslim body and identity. Very much similar to a Dalit like Anand Teltumbde who is not Dalit enough because he speaks of right to education and corporate Hindutva. Also like Stan Swamy who was also not Christian enough because he was willing to provide education to all those who sought for it. Like Vara Vara rao who is a Brahmin by birth but not one by karma. It is these transgressions that are the source for why they were incarcerated. Ideally speaking, Hindutva project should be happy with them because they are talking of a larger solidarity, even if they are not invoking the Hindu identity. Dialectically, the politics of Umar can be harnessed for creating a larger solidarity that can be named Hindu. But that only means Hindutva is not about larger solidarity. Not about creating a we-ness among the Hindus. It is a project of stoking conflicts and all those whose politics are set to douse the fire will attract their ire. Why is that all those who talk of social solidarity are seen to be weakening Hindu solidarity? Why can they not be seen as a complimentary political process? It is because Hindu solidarity has no social content. It does not promise right to equal education, health and employment. Making universal social demands is the true sense in which secular solidarity can be forged in hierarchical societies. But what about the need to assert one’s Muslim identity as a symbol of resistance? Should one not assert one’s Muslimness because one is being discriminated for being a Muslim? The point is there is actually no choice in not being a Muslim in a majoritarian society. Should one not assert Muslim religious symbolism in order to demand dignity? To say ones religiosity cannot be despised? This cannot be denied but this cannot be accepted as a self-evident truth.Muslims are also despised for being poor, for being perceived as being unclean and for exemplifying a thoughtless homogenised solidity that threatens others. Does asserting a homogenised Muslimness address any of these? There is everydayness to communalism that is invisibilised in the hyper-claims of Islamophobia. Islamophobia is a socially displaced language that suits the Muslim elites, not those eking out a living through daily wage work.Also read: Can We Fault Sharjeel Imam and Umar Khalid for Dreaming of a Better World?For them they are vulnerable not only because they are Muslims but also because they are poor. For a Kashmiri Shawl seller he is vulnerable because he is a poor vendor on the street, who happens to be a Kashmiri. Just like the way rich Muslims migrated to Pakistan during partition, leaving behind their poorer counter parts. In this their Muslimness did not matter, nor did it hold them together. It is the same elite today that talks about hyper-Muslimness to preserve, not their Muslim identity but their elite status within the Muslim community. It is pretty much the same logic with secular elites, who are secular in a manner that speaks to them being elites. They are elites first, and secular next.Asaduddin Owaisi and his brother Akbaruddin Owaisi are the symbols of this Muslim assertion, even if they have used expletives against Lord Ram but Umar is not the ideal or a ‘useful’ Muslim because he dared to speak of love and the national flag. What secular elites miss to take into account is the fact that nature of assertion needs to account for the sociology of the protest language. This happens because secular elites speak from the social gestation that their class and caste advantage offer them. The grim part of this secular dilemma is majoritarian mobilisation understands this logic and has sorted them out. One can say, risking sounding cynical, is that such a discourse born from the elite gestation is needed for a majoritarian consolidation, and voices like Umar aren’t.What is being criminalised in the continuing incarceration of Umar is the call for larger solidarity, and love that demands a critique of the hatred for the weak that has emerged as a legitimate ethic under neoliberal times. The right of a Muslim to a dignified life is integral to this discourse; it cannot be claimed in lieu of it. Ajay Gudavarthy is an associate professor at the Centre for Political Studies at JNU.