Born at Patna, Bihar, he was educated at Bankipur College and Calcutta Medical College. After qualifying in Calcutta, he entered the Bengal Medical Service, but after some years he was granted study leave to come to England and attended St Bartholomew's Hospital. Having passed both the final Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons and the Membership of the Royal College of Physicians in the same year, he returned to India. In 1919 he resigned from Government service and became Professor of Medicine at the independent Carmichael (now KG Kar) Medical College in Calcutta, and became also heavily involved as a major figure in both municipal and national politics. He remained nevertheless in demand as the outstanding medical consultant, towering above his contemporaries and at various times attending Gandhi, Prasad and Nehru. In 1929 he became first president of the unofficial All-India Medical Council, usurping the powers previously wielded by the Director-General of the IMS. The council became responsible for controlling standards of medical education, in place of the annual inspections and resultant recognition by the General Medical Council in England which had for long been offensive to Indians. As a disciple of Gandhi and a member of the Congress Working Committee he spent some time in prison as a seditionist. In 1948 he became Second Minister and then Prime Minister of Bengal, having previously refused the Governorship of the United Provinces at the hands of the British. At one time Mayor of Calcutta, he was a man of tact, capacity and statesmanship; a tall, handsome figure in flowing robes of homespun cotton with the traditional white cap. He died on 1 July 1962, his eightieth birthday.