Rahul Gandhi, a senior Congress leader and the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, began his two-day tour to the United States on April 19, 2025, when he landed at Boston Logan International Airport.
On April 21 and 22, he is expected to spend time at Brown University in Rhode Island, where he will give a speech and converse with students and teachers.
The Saxena Centre for Contemporary South Asia at Brown’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs is hosting the event with the goal of encouraging communication and intellectual interchange between Gandhi and the scholarly community.
In addition to his academic commitments, Rahul Gandhi is anticipated to meet with members of the Indian diaspora, such as office holders, non-resident Indians (NRIs), and members of the Indian Overseas Congress (IOC), in order to facilitate networking and conversations pertinent to the Indian community worldwide.
Gandhi is making his second trip to the US in as many months. He previously visited Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and the University of Texas in Dallas in September 2024, where he spoke with academics, students, and members of the Indian diaspora.
His comments about India’s reservation system, in which he called for its repeal once the country is a “fair place” and emphasised the necessity of a caste census to address the under-representation of OBCs, Dalits, and Adivasis—what he called the “elephant in the room” in terms of institutional capture—had caused political controversy during that visit.
Rahul Gandhi’s present tour coincides with ongoing legal scrutiny of the Gandhi family by Indian authorities, who are pursuing investigations into family members and bringing proceedings relating alleged financial violations involving the National Herald newspaper.
Gandhi still keeps up a focus on important social and political concerns impacting India and the international community while actively engaging with audiences of international academics and diaspora.
