[citation needed] He was a Hindu Kayastha by birth and his father Guruprasad Mitra was a landholder who led an agitation against oppression by British indigo planters.

[1] Opposed to the partition of Bengal and influenced by colleagues like Ananda Mohan Bose and Kalishankar Shukul, Mitra joined the anti-Partition Swadeshi movement.

[9] For his involvement in the Swadeshi movement, Mitra had to resign from his job as a professor of history and in 1908 was deported from Calcutta for two years by the British authorities.

At their wedding, conducted in accordance with Brahmo rites, Narendranath Dutta sang two songs that were composed by Rabindranath Tagore for the occasion.

[1] Besides his journalistic pieces in the Sanjibani, Mitra also authored several books including Mahammad-Charita, Buddhadev-Charita and Bauddhadharmer Sangksipta Bibaran.

The Assamese writer Padmanath Gohain Baruah included a short biography of Mitra in his Nithikatha which he wrote as a textbook for school children to "show respect" to "a selfless patriot and deeply religious man [who] Through Sanjibani, a paper which was run and edited by him, the bad luck of the tea garden coolies of Assam were slightly changed".