Even the ‘Left–Right’ dichotomy was often seen as one between radicals and gradualists. This explains why Subhas Chandra Bose would write of Tilak and Aurobindo Ghosh as belonging to the Left!30 Note that the fluid use of these terms was not restricted to India—the Nazis are usually depicted today as the far Right, but they considered themselves socialists, and the full form of the Nazi party is National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Thus, one needs to be careful when imposing today’s ideological lens to the use of these terms in an earlier era.
