A Letter From Saifai, UP: A village grapples with the loss of Netaji

Saifai pradhan Ramphal Valmiki (above) says he and Mulayam practised together at Saifai’s akhadas. (Express photo by Vishal Srivastav)

As they take their positions in the middle of a 144-square-metre wrestling mat in the indoor stadium, coach Kamlesh Kumar Yadav tells them about the technique made famous by Mulayam.

“Mantri ji Mulayam Singh ji ka ek daav, charkha daav, bahut famous thaa. Aaj uski practise karte hain (Mulayam Singh Yadav’s charkha daav was very popular. We will practise the move today),” Kamlesh says.

He then helps the boys learn the manoeuvres while other students watch carefully. After three rounds, Himanshu and Prince seem to be picking up.

“It takes one to three minutes to finish a charkha daav. Due to time constraints, this move is now done only in dangals in rural areas and not at state- and national-level tournaments,” Kamlesh says.

Like in wrestling, Mulayam would later perfect that move in politics too, catching his political rivals and detractors off guard. But as he wrestled his way to the top of Uttar Pradesh politics, the son of Saifai never forgot his home village.

He would give back generously, building sports colleges and stadiums across Saifai, and helping his nondescript village find a place on the wrestling map of UP.

Saifai’s turnaround began after Mulayam became the chief minister for the first time in 1989. He got a national-level sports complex, the Master Chandgiram Sports Stadium, built in the village — the first of its kind in the area with a hockey pitch, multipurpose halls and a swimming pool .

Coach Kamlesh says that while wrestlers practised at the 17-acre stadium from 1995 to 2014, they later shifted to Major Dhyan Chand Sports College, a residential sports academy built in 2014 by the Samajwadi Party government led by Mulayam’s son, Akhilesh Yadav.

Spread over 70 acres and equipped with state-of-the-art facilities, the college offers sports training in wrestling, cricket, football, hockey, athletics, badminton, swimming and kabaddi. There are 55 students, all boys, currently enrolled in Classes 6 to 12 for the wrestling course.

Himanshu and Prince are both from Azamgarh. While the nearest sports college is in Gorakhpur, 105 km from Azamgarh, they chose the one in Saifai, 490 km away, for the facilities it offers. Their classes started in July this year.

Himanshu, who dreams of winning medals for his country, says h is father, a farmer and a wrestler in Azamgarh who took part in dangals, motivated him to pick up the sport. Prince says he was inspired by his elder brother, who got a job in the Indian Army after practising wrestling in Meerut.

Eleven-year-old Shivanand Yadav, who hails from Gorakhpur district, says he took admission at the college because he wanted to live away from home so that he could focus on wrestling. “If I had taken admission near Gorakhpur, my parents would have called me home every weekend as well as on holidays. That would have affected my practice. With Saifai being far from Gorakhpur, they don’t ask me to travel frequently,” says Shivanand, adding that he plans to go home for Diwali this year, the first time after enrolling at the college.

If he excels in wrestling, Shivanand says, he might get a government job through the sports quota. “Medal marenge to naukri milega (I can get a job if I win medals),” says Shivanand, whose father is a sanitation worker in the Gorakhpur municipal corporation.

Himanshu, Prince, Shivanand and many other students of the sports college were part of Mulayam’s funeral procession on Tuesday.

“Students paid tributes to Netaji because ‘ wrestler himself, he always encouraged young wrestlers. He had a major contribution in developing facilities for wrestlers in Saifai,” Kamlesh says.

Though the wrestling bouts moved to the sports college after it came up in 2014, the stadium that Mulayam built would host an annual dangal to mark the SP veteran’s birthday on November 22 — an event for which he would unfailingly travel to Saifai. Last year, too, Mulayam’s brother and Jaswantnagar MLA Shivpal Singh Yadav had organised a dangal at the stadium but with his health failing, Mulayam could not attend it.

Villagers say Mulayam practised in several wrestling pits, including one under a neem tree, now part of villager Radhey Shyam’s fields. Over the years, as Saifai got its stadium and the sports college, this akhada and the others fell into disuse.

Ramphal Valmiki, 72, Saifai village pradhan and a childhood friend of Mulayam’s, says, “He (Mulayam) had a group of 14-15 friends in the village. I used to be part of this group. We would build akharas in the fields with our hands and practise wrestling every day. But Mulayam stopped wrestling after becoming an MLA in 1967.”

Valmiki, who holds a BA (Honours) degree in English and a post graduate degree in Hindi from Kolkata University, says that Mulayam used wrestling as a social vehicle to end caste differences and untouchability.

“I am a Dalit, so initially I would hesitate because I was afraid of upper-caste wrestlers from. But Netaji got me to practise with the Yadavs as well as other OBCs and upper-caste wrestlers. He got me to get rid of that fear.”