Rajiv and his younger brother Sanjay (1946–80), the sons of Feroze and Indira Gandhi, were educated at the prestigious Doon School in Dehradun. Rajiv then attended Imperial College, London, and completed an engineering course at the University of Cambridge (1965). After returning to India, he acquired a commercial pilot's license and, beginning in 1968, worked for Indian Airlines.

While his brother was alive, Rajiv largely stayed out of politics; but, after Sanjay, a vigorous political figure, died in an airplane crash on June 23, 1980, Indira Gandhi, then prime minister, drafted Rajiv into a political career. In June 1981 he was elected in a by-election to the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament) and in the same month became a member of the national executive of the Youth Congress.

Whereas Sanjay had been described as politically “ruthless” and “willful” (he was considered a prime mover in his mother's state of emergency in 1975–77), Rajiv was regarded as a nonabrasive person who consulted other party members and refrained from hasty decisions. When his mother was killed on Oct. 31, 1984, Rajiv was sworn in as prime minister that same day and was elected leader of the Congress (I) Party a few days later. He led the Congress (I) Party to a landslide victory in elections to the Lok Sabha in December 1984, and his administration took vigorous measures to reform the government bureaucracy and liberalize the country's economy. Gandhi's attempts to discourage separatist movements in Punjab and Kashmir backfired, however, and after his government became embroiled in several financial scandals, his leadership became increasingly ineffectual. He resigned his post as prime minister in November 1989, though he remained leader of the Congress (I) Party.

Gandhi was campaigning in Tamil Nadu for upcoming parliamentary elections when he and 16 others were killed by a bomb concealed in a basket of flowers carried by a woman associated with the Tamil Tigers. In 1998 an Indian court convicted 26 people in the conspiracy to assassinate Gandhi. The conspirators, who consisted of Tamil militants from Sri Lanka and their Indian allies, had sought revenge against Gandhi because the Indian troops he sent to Sri Lanka in 1987 to help enforce a peace accord there had ended up fighting the Tamil separatist guerrillas.