He was born in an Orthodox family in Bhatpara, North 24 Parganas West Bengal, India. His initial training was in Sanskrit. He then went to the Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan for higher studies. After studying French in the Alliance Française in Calcutta, he went to University of Paris for his doctoral degree on French government scholarship. He immersed himself in French literature and translated Rimbaud, Henri Michaux and Descartes into Bengali. Despite his significant literary output, Lokenath never received the kind of critical attention he deserved in the Bengali literary circle. As Meenakshi Mukherjeer writes in the introduction of her English translation of the book "The Virgin Fish of Babughat", "He remained a writers' writer, discussed in little magazines and exclusive literary journals, forever an outsider in the mainstream literary world of Kolkata. Apart from the unfamiliarity of his imaginative world, the fact that he spent most of his adult life outside Bengal might also have accentuated his alienation."