[1][2] He commented on the battle of Plassey and the arrival of British Rule in India as "A night of Eternal Gloom".

In 1868, he earned his BA from General Assembly's Institution (now Scottish Church College), and after teaching for a brief period at Hare School, he joined the colonial administrative services as a Deputy Magistrate.

Palashir Juddha (1875), a long epic poem lamenting the betrayal of Siraj ud-Daulah by his followers and his defeat at the Battle of Plassey, was an evocative expression of Bengali nationalism in literature, and it established his reputation as a powerful Bengali poet.

He wrote biographies of Jesus, Buddha, and Cleopatra in the Bengali language, and made verse translations of the Bhagavad Gita and the Markandeya Purana.

His five-volume autobiography, Amar Jiban (My Life), is an important document chronicling the politics and social aspirations of the Bengali literati in the late nineteenth century.