 Born on 17 August 1889 in Calcutta, West Bengal, Niranjan Pal was born in an illustrious Sylheti family, his father was the noted freedom fighter, Bipin Chandra Pal, and Niranjan himself as a teenager was briefly involved in the Indian freedom struggle during an association with Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and Madanlal Dhingra in London.By the late 1910s, he started writing and eventually wrote "The Light of Asia" and "Shiraz", both of which were performed on stage in London.Both were commercially successful and attracted the attention of German filmmaker Franz Osten, who made screen versions in India.