Rahul Gandhi is here, and he is here to stay. By taking on the Tiger in its own den, one of India's most promising young politicians has once again proved his mettle. Defying a call to disrupt his Mumbai visit over remarks that slammed the Shiv Sena's Mumbai-for-Maharashtrians agenda, a calm and composed Congress General Secretary cocked a snook at the Thackerays by taking time off during his short stay in the city to stop at an ATM in Santa Cruz and also board a local train.

Drastically changing the arrangements made for him in Mumbai, Rahul hopped onto a local train at Andheri to make his way to a Ghatpokar slum. His unscheduled train journey sent the Railway Police into a tizzy.
A scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family, Rahul was born on June 19, 1970 to Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi. He was the older of two children, the other being his sister Priyanka. Rahul attended Modern School, New Delhi before entering the The Doon School, also his father's alma mater, from 1981-83 before being home-schooled for security reasons.

Starting university at Harvard, he got his B.A. from Rollins College, Florida in 1994 due to interruptions in his studies caused by security concerns after his father's assassination. He received an M.Phil. in Development Studies in 1995 from Trinity College, Cambridge.

During the lifetime of Indira Gandhi, both Rajiv and Sonia remained low key. Consequently their children too remained out of the public eye. But the assassination of Indira in 1984 suddenly brought the national focus on this young family in a way perhaps they had never imagined.  The tragedy of his mother's untimely end thrust Rajiv Gandhi, a commercial pilot with Indian Airlines, into the limelight as the country's Prime Minister.
Tragedy once again struck the Gandhi family when Rajiv was assassinated by LTTE activists on May 21, 1991 while campaigning in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu.

Years later when Rahul's sister Priyanka decided to visit Nalini Sriharan, the only surviving member of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination squad, at the Vellore jail in Tamil Nadu, Rahul told mediapersons that the trauma of his father's brutal killing was now a thing of the past. "We have been brought up not to harbour [thoughts of] hatred or violence," he was quoted as saying.

Rahul stayed away from public life for a long time after his father's death. He was spotted on a few family occasions like the February 18, 1997 marriage of his sister Priyanka Gandhi with businessman Robert Vadra.

 Then came Rahul's first brush with the country's electoral process. He left his job at a financial consultancy firm in UK and returned India to help his mother, by then elected Congress President, and sister prepare for the 1999 Lok Sabha elections. But even then he was content to let Priyanka take the center stage.
Despite his reluctance to enter active politics, Rahul's growing visibility on the campaign trail could not be ignored.  In 2003, there was widespread media speculation about Rahul Gandhi's imminent entry into national politics, which he did not confirm. He appeared with his mother at public events and Congress meetings. In 2004 he also traveled to Pakistan on a goodwill visit to watch the first cricket series between the countries in 14 years in a One Day International with his sister Priyanka Gandhi.