 He taught for a short while at Hansraj College.In 1984, he was awarded a doctorate degree at Oxford University, where he was a member of Magdalen College, for the thesis "Political mobilisation and the nationalism movement in India – a study of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, 1936-1942" written under supervision of the noted Indian historian Tapan Raychaudhuri.Mitra is married to Shobori Ganguly.