Syama Prasad Mukherjee was born in a Bengali Brahmin family on 6 July 1901 in Calcutta (Kolkata). His family originally hailed from Jirat, Hooghly District, West Bengal. His grandfather Ganga Prasad Mukherjee was born in Jirat, Hooghly District and he was first in the family who came to Calcutta and settled here.

He enrolled in Bhawanipur’s Mitra Institution in 1906 and his behaviour in school was later described favourably by his teachers. In 1914, he passed his matriculation examination and was admitted into Presidency College. He stood seventeenth in the Inter Arts Examination in 1916and graduated in English, securing the first position in first class in 1921. He was married to Sudha Devi on 16 April 1922. Mukherjee also completed an MA in Bengali, being graded as first class in 1923 and also became a fellow of the Senate in 1923. He completed his BL in 1924.

He enrolled as an advocate in Calcutta High Court in 1924, the same year in which his father had died. Subsequently, he left for England in 1926 to study at Lincoln’s Inn and was called to the English Bar in the same year. In 1934, at the age of 33, he became the youngest Vice-Chancellor of the University of Calcutta; he held the office until 1938. During his term as Vice-Chancellor, Rabindranath Tagore delivered the University Convocation Address in Bengali for the first time, and the Indian vernacular was introduced as a subject for the highest examination. On 10 September 1938, the Senate of Calcutta university resolved to confer honorary D. Litt. on the Ex-Vice Chancellor in its opinion “by reason of eminent position and attainments, a fit and proper person to receive such a degree.” Mukherjee received the D.Litt from Calcutta University on 26 November 1938.

Mukherjee started his political career in 1929, when he entered the Bengal Legislative Council as an Indian National Congress (INC) candidate representing Calcutta University. However, he resigned the next year when the INC decided to boycott the legislature. Subsequently, he contested the election as an independent candidate and was elected in the same year. In 1937, he was elected as an independent candidate in the elections which brought the Krishak Praja Party-All India Muslim League coalition to power.

Mukherjee joined the Hindu Mahasabha in Bengal in 1939 and became its acting president that same year. He was appointed as the working president of the organisation in 1940. In February 1941, Mukherjee told a Hindu rally that if Muslims wanted to live in Pakistan they should “pack their bag and baggage and leave India … [to] wherever they like”. Yet, the Hindu Mahasabha also formed provincial coalition governments with the All-India Muslim League in Sindh and the North-West Frontier Province while Mukherjee was its leader. He was elected as the President of Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha in 1943. He remained in this position till 1946, with Laxman Bhopatkar becoming the new President in the same year.

He served as the Finance Minister of Bengal Province in 1941–42 under A.K. Fazlul Haq’s Progressive Coalition government which was formed on 12 December 1941 after the resignations of the Congress government. During his tenure, his statements against the government were censored and his movements were restricted. He was also prevented from visiting the Midnapore district in 1942 when severe floods caused a heavy loss of life and property. He resigned on 20 November 1942 accusing the British government of trying to hold on to India under any cost and criticised its repressive policies against the Quit India Movement. After resigning, he mobilised support and organised relief with the help of Mahabodhi Society, Ramakrishna Mission and Marwari Relief Society. In 1946, he was again elected as an independent candidate from the Calcutta University. He was elected as a member of the Constituent Assembly of India in the same year.

Syama Prasad was also affiliated with the Buddhist Mahabodhi Society. In 1942, he succeeded Dr. M.N. Mukherjee to become the president of the organisation. The relics of Gautam Buddha’s two disciples Sariputta and Maudgalyayana, discovered in the Great Stupa at Sanchi by Sir Alexander Cunningham in 1851 and kept at the British Museum, were brought back to India by HMIS Tir. A ceremony attended by politicians and leaders of many foreign countries was held on the next day at Calcutta Maidan. They were handed over by Nehru to Mukherjee, who later took these relics to Cambodia, Burma, Thailand and Vietnam. Upon his return to India, he placed the relics inside the Sanchi Stupa in November 1952.

Mukherjee demanded the partition of Bengal in 1946 to prevent the inclusion of its Hindu-majority areas in a Muslim-dominated East Pakistan. A meeting held by the Mahasabha on 15 April 1947 in Tarakeswar authorised him to take steps for ensuring partition of Bengal. In May 1947, he wrote a letter to Lord Mountbatten telling him that Bengal must be partitioned even if India was not. He also opposed a failed bid for a united but independent Bengal made in 1947 by Sarat Bose, the brother of Subhas Chandra Bose, and Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, a Bengali Muslim politician. His views were strongly affected by the Noakhali genocide in East Bengal, where mobs belonging to the Muslim League massacred Hindus.

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru inducted Mukherjee into the Interim Central Government as a Minister for Industry and Supply on 15 August 1947. Mukherjee began to have differences with Mahasabha after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, in which the organisation was blamed by Sardar Patel for creating the atmosphere that led to the killing. Mukherjee suggested the organisation suspend its political activities. Shortly after it did, in December 1948, he left. One of his reasons was the rejection of his proposal to allow non-Hindus to become members. Mukherjee resigned along with K.C. Neogy from the Cabinet on 8 April 1950 over a disagreement about the 1950 Delhi Pact with Pakistani Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan.

Mukherjee founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh on 21 October 1951 in Delhi, becoming its first president. In the 1952 elections, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) won three seats in the Parliament of India, including Mukherjee’s. He had formed the National Democratic Party within the Parliament. It consisted of 32 members of the Lok Sabha and 10 members of the Rajya Sabha; however, it was not recognised by the speaker as an opposition party. The BJS was created with the objective of nation-building and “nationalising” all non-Hindus by “inculcating Bharatiya Culture” in them. The party was ideologically close to the RSS and widely considered the proponent of Hindu nationalism.

Mukherjee was strongly opposed to Article 370, seeing it as a threat to national unity. He fought against it inside and outside the parliament with one of the goals of Bharatiya Jana Sangh being its abrogation. He raised his voice strongly against the provision in his Lok Sabha speech on 26 June 1952. He termed the arrangements under the article as Balkanization of India and the three-nation theory of Sheikh Abdullah. The state was granted its own flag along with a prime minister whose permission was required for anyone to enter the state. In opposition to this, Mukherjee once said “Ek desh mein do Vidhan, do Pradhan aur Do Nishan nahi chalenge” (A single country can’t have two constitutions, two prime ministers, and two national emblems). Bharatiya Jana Sangh along with Hindu Mahasabha and Jammu Praja Parishad launched a massive Satyagraha to get the provisions removed. In his letter to Nehru dated 3 February 1953, he wrote that the issue of accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India should not be allowed to hang fire.

Mukherjee went to visit Kashmir in 1953 and observed a hunger strike to protest the law that prohibited Indian citizens from settling within the state and mandating that they carry ID cards. Mukherjee wanted to go to Jammu and Kashmir but, because of the prevailing permit system, he was not given permission. He was arrested on 11 May at Lakhanpur while crossing the border into Kashmir illegally. Although the ID card rule was revoked owing to his efforts, he died as a detainee on 23 June 1953 under mysterious circumstances.

Mukherjee was arrested upon entering Kashmir on 11 May 1953. He and two of his arrested companions were first taken to Central Jail of Srinagar. Later they were transferred to a cottage outside the city. Mukherjee’s condition started deteriorating and he started feeling pain in the back and high temperature on the night between 19 and 20 June. He was diagnosed with dry pleurisy from which he had also suffered in 1937 and 1944. The doctor Ali Mohammad prescribed him a streptomycin injection and powders, however, Mukherjee informed him that his family physician had told him that streptomycin did not suit his system. The doctor, however, told him that new information about the drug had come to light and assured him that he would be fine. On 22 June, he felt pain in the heart region, started perspiring and started feeling like he was fainting. He was later shifted to a hospital and provisionally diagnosed with a heart attack. He died a day later. The state government declared that he had died on 23 June at 3:40 a.m. due to a heart attack.

Shyama Prasad Mukherji College of University of Delhi was established in 1969 in his memory. On 7 August 1998, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation named a bridge after Mukherjee. Delhi has a major road named after Mukherjee called Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Marg. Kolkata, too, has a major road called Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Road. In 2001, the main research funding institute of the Government of India, CSIR, instituted a new fellowship named after him.

S.C. Das claims that Mukherjee was murdered. Atal Bihari Vajpayee claimed in 2004 that the arrest of Mukherjee in Jammu and Kashmir was a “Nehru conspiracy”. However, while the BJP in 2011 called for an inquiry to probe Mukherjee’s death, no investigation was launched after the BJP took office in 2014.

On 22 April 2010, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s (MCD) newly constructed Rs. 650-crore building, the tallest building in Delhi, was named the Doctor Syama Prasad Mukherjee Civic Centre. It was inaugurated by Home Minister P. Chidambaram. The building, which is estimated to cater to 20,000 visitors per day, will also house different wings and offices of the MCD. The MCD also built the Syama Prasad Swimming Pool Complex which hosted aquatic events during the 2010 Commonwealth Games held at New Delhi.

In 2012, a flyover at Mathikere in Bangalore City Limits was inaugurated and named the Dr Syamaprasad Mukherjee Flyover. The International Institute of Information Technology, Naya Raipur is named after him.

In 2014, a multipurpose indoor stadium built on the Goa University campus in Goa was named after Mukherjee.

The government of India approved the Shyama Prasad Mukherji Rurban Mission (SPMRM) with an outlay of ₹51.42 billion (US$720 million) on 16 September 2015. The Mission was launched by the Prime Minister on 21 February 2016 at Kurubhata, Murmunda Rurban Cluster, Rajnandgaon, Chhattisgarh. In April 2017, Ranchi College was upgraded to Shyama Prasad Mukherjee University. In September 2017, Kolar, a town in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, was renamed as Shyama Prasad Mukherji Nagar by Shivraj Singh Chauhan.

On 5 August 2019, when Government of India proposed constitutional Amendment to repeal Article 370, many newspapers described the event as realization of Syama Prasad Mukherjee’s dream.

On 12 January 2020, the Kolkata Port Trust was renamed as Dr. Syama Prasad Mukherjee Port by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.