Ray's father, Sudhir Kumar Ray, was a well-known barrister of Calcutta High Court and a member of the Indian National Congress and his mother Aparna Devi, was the elder daughter of the barrister and nationalist leader Chittaranjan Das and Basanti Devi grew up in England.

In 1939, he was the captain of the victorious Presidency College football team which won both the Elliot and Hardinge Birthday Shields.

[citation needed] In 1957 he was elected as an MLA from Bhowanipore which he won by a large majority, becoming the youngest member of the West Bengal Cabinet under the leadership of Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy.

However, after one year, he resigned from his ministerial portfolios and Congress party membership, citing differences with Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy.

In 1971 Indian general election, he won the Raiganj seat & became the Union Cabinet Minister of Education & Youth Services under Indira Gandhi.

[11] His administration was faced with the massive problem of resettling over a million refugees from East Pakistan fleeing war & the campaign of genocide of Bengalis launched by the Pakistani military in various parts of the state.

However, he refused to hold election to the panchayats out of fear of Naxalites and Communists escalating violence in rural areas.

After Indira Gandhi's murder, Ray tried to return to state politics by standing against veteran Communist leader Somnath Chatterjee as the Congress(I) candidate in bypolls to the Bolpur seat in 1985, but his unpopularity and enmity with a section of state Congress leaders caused him to lose by a margin of around 1 lakh votes.

[10] Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi appointed Ray as the Governor of Punjab from 2 April 1986 where he played a pro-active role in suppressing Sikh insurgents, however there too he was accused of conducting police brutalities while the state was under President's rule.

He proposed to the prime minister Indira Gandhi to impose an "internal emergency" and also drafted the letter for the President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed to issue the proclamation and showed her how democratic freedoms could be suspended while remaining within the ambit of the Constitution.

Ray continued to remain close with his protégé Mamata Banerjee, even after she left the Congress and formed her separate party.

The society engages in various social activities and will be celebrating the Birth Centenary Year of Shri Siddhartha Shankar Ray.