He earned his MA and Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies and returned to India briefly in 1979 to take up a management position at Calcutta Chemical Company, a family.

Dasgupta has been active in national politics since the early 90s as a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP); he believed in the potential of the Mandal Commission recommendations and the Ram Rath Yatra to forge a common Hindu identity.

I happen to be one of the few to have retained a precarious toe-hold in the mainstream media.Throughout these years, Dasgupta emphasized the value of English in reaching out to the elites — who were allegedly mass-committed to the left-liberal cause — and winning them over towards hindutva;[20] he was one of the most fierce critics of the pro-vernacular policies followed by the communist government of West Bengal.

[21] In April 2016, the incumbent BJP government nominated Dasgupta to the Rajya Sabha as an eminent personality in literature; his term would have continued till 2022.

[22] However, in 2021, Dasgupta resigned from Rajya Sabha to contest the Legislative Assembly election in West Bengal for BJP from Tarakeswar; he lost by over 7000 votes.

[26][27][28] He is married to Reshmi Ray Dasgupta, Lifestyle Editor at The Economic Times and has a son who is a practicing lawyer in the Supreme Court of India.