Saifai, a village in Etawah district on the Uttar Pradesh side of the Chambal country, was an ordinary farming settlement when Mulayam Singh Yadav was born there on 22 November 1939. By the time he died in 2022 it had an airstrip, a medical university and a stadium, and had become shorthand in Indian political commentary for the transformation of a village by the rise of one of its sons. Mulayam Singh served three terms as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, held the Defence portfolio in a national government, and founded a party that has been one of the defining forces in the politics of India's largest state for three decades.

Wrestler, teacher, politician

He was born into a farming family; his father Sughar Singh worked the land. His first public identity was as a wrestler. The akhara was the social centre of village life in that region, and Mulayam Singh was good enough to be noticed — the account of his being spotted at a bout in Jaswantnagar by the local political figure Nathu Singh, who then encouraged his entry into politics, is one of the founding stories of his career. The nickname Netaji, by which supporters knew him for the rest of his life, dates from this early period.

He took a bachelor's degree at Karm Kshetra Post Graduate College in Etawah, a teaching qualification at A. K. College in Shikohabad, and a master's in political science from B. R. College under Agra University. In 1963 he began work as a schoolmaster at Jain Inter College in Karhal, Mainpuri, later becoming a lecturer. He remained proud of the teaching background and it shaped his political register — plain Hindi, rural idiom, direct address.

Lohia's politics and the rise through Uttar Pradesh

Mulayam Singh's political formation was socialist. He was a follower of Ram Manohar Lohia and absorbed the Lohiaite programme of backward-caste assertion, opposition to English as an instrument of elite closure, and hostility to Congress dominance. In 1967, at the age of twenty-seven, he was elected to the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly from Jaswantnagar on a Samyukta Socialist Party ticket. He was jailed during the Emergency of 1975 to 1977, and held ministerial office in the Janata government that followed.

Through the 1980s he built a base among Other Backward Classes, particularly Yadavs, and among Muslim voters, and served as Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly. That coalition — often summarised in Uttar Pradesh politics by the initials denoting Muslims and Yadavs — became the spine of his electoral strength.

He first became Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in December 1989, holding office until June 1991. He returned for a second term from December 1993 to June 1995, and a third from August 2003 to May 2007. In 1992 he founded the Samajwadi Party, which he led for the rest of his life and which remains the principal opposition force in the state.

Ayodhya, and the defining controversy

In October 1990, during his first term, his government ordered police to stop kar sevaks advancing towards the disputed site at Ayodhya. Police opened fire and a number of people were killed. The decision was the single most consequential act of his career. It made him, permanently, a hero to those who saw the state as obliged to protect a place of worship and a hate figure to those who did not. He never disavowed it, defending it consistently as a decision taken to prevent a far larger conflagration. It remains one of the most contested episodes in post-independence Indian politics.

Defence Minister and national politics

Between 1 June 1996 and 19 March 1998, Mulayam Singh served as Union Minister of Defence in the United Front governments led by H. D. Deve Gowda and I. K. Gujral. His tenure saw significant procurement decisions for the Indian Air Force and a public emphasis on welfare and conditions for serving soldiers and veterans, an issue he continued to raise in Parliament long afterwards.

He was elected to the Lok Sabha seven times, from constituencies including Mainpuri, Azamgarh, Sambhal and Kannauj, and to the Uttar Pradesh assembly on numerous occasions. He was frequently discussed as a potential Prime Minister during the coalition era of the 1990s, and he was a central figure in every calculation about non-Congress, non-BJP government formation for two decades.

Later years and legacy

In 2012 he handed the chief ministership of Uttar Pradesh to his son Akhilesh Yadav following a Samajwadi Party victory, and the later years of his life were marked by a public and difficult contest within his own family over control of the party. He remained a Member of Parliament until his death.

He died on 10 October 2022 at a hospital in Gurugram, aged eighty-two. He was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 2023, posthumously.

Saifai itself is the clearest physical record of his career. The village acquired institutions no settlement of its size would ordinarily hold, and became both a symbol of what political power can do for a rural constituency and a standing subject of criticism about the concentration of resources. Whatever view is taken of that, the underlying fact is undisputed: Mulayam Singh Yadav made the movement of power away from the traditional upper-caste elite of northern India and towards its backward-caste majority the organising project of his life, and he was more successful at it than almost anyone else of his generation.