Rahul Gandhi recently offered Parliament a taxonomy of political stupidity which, despite the inevitable hysteria over vocabulary, contained a more interesting observation than most speeches delivered in that building.

There was, he suggested, the person who does not know, the person who thinks he knows everything, and then there is the andhbhakt -- the person so devoted to the latter that he begins treating him as something approaching divine. It was an amusing formulation, but also an accidentally universal one. For Rahul Gandhi was describing a species that exists in considerably greater abundance than just within the BJP.

The andhbhakt is not a political party member. It is a psychological condition. And social media has turned it into a growth industry.

The modern political leader is no longer merely a politician. He is a product, a logo, a moving wallpaper of the national imagination. His face is reproduced endlessly, his gestures analysed frame by frame, his sentences clipped into ammunition, and every appearance accompanied by an army of digital interpreters explaining what he really meant, why he was right, and why anyone who thinks otherwise is either stupid, malicious or secretly working for the other side.

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The politician becomes larger than life because the electorate has become smaller in its expectations. We no longer seem particularly interested in whether a politician is right. We just want to know whether he is ours. And so the great binary has arrived. You are either for Narendra Modi or against him; you are either for Rahul Gandhi or against him. You are either a nationalist or an anti-national, secular or communal, progressive or reactionary. There is apparently no longer any socially acceptable territory in which one can say, "Actually, he is right about this and completely wrong about that." That sentence has become almost obscene because it suggests independence. And independence is dangerous to a political tribe because it cannot be reliably predicted, monetised or mobilised.

Social media has discovered something rather unfortunate about human beings, that we are much more enthusiastic about defending our team than examining our opinions. The algorithm, being a machine rather less sentimental than its users, has learned this lesson perfectly. While nuance produces a shrug, outrage produces engagement. A measured argument receives a few approving nods; a digital execution, on the other hand, would produce 40,000 comments and the gratifying sensation that civilisation has once again been defended.

The result is a political culture in which the most valuable quality a politician can possess is not wisdom but recognisability. He must have a brand, the brand must have a personality, and the personality must have enemies. And the enemies must be sufficiently wicked that defending the leader becomes indistinguishable from defending the nation, the Constitution, secularism, civilisation or whatever grand abstraction happens to be available that afternoon. This is how political judgment gets replaced by fandom, and fandom has notoriously low standards.

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The most amusing thing in all this is that every political camp can see this pathology with perfect clarity when it occurs on the other side. The Modi supporter who refuses to acknowledge a single error by Modi is an andhbhakt. The Rahul Gandhi supporter who refuses to acknowledge a single error by Rahul Gandhi is merely a loyal democrat exercising legitimate political solidarity. The BJP supporter who claims every criticism of Modi is part of a conspiracy is captive to propaganda. The Congress supporter who claims every criticism of Rahul Gandhi is ammunition for the BJP is defending the opposition from internal sabotage. The vocabulary changes, but the psychology does not.

This is precisely why the current hysteria over Shashi Tharoor is so revealing. Tharoor says something complimentary about Narendra Modi, and the political equivalent of an ecclesiastical court assembles to examine his heresy. He questions whether a Rahul Gandhi initiative has actually resonated with young people, and suddenly the question is not whether his criticism is correct, but whether Narendra Modi might benefit from hearing it.

It is barely a week since Rahul Gandhi explained the andhbhakt to Parliament, and some of his own have already demonstrated the definition with almost comic precision. Confronted with criticism of Rahul Gandhi, they have not asked whether the criticism is true, but whether the critic is sufficiently loyal.

What a wonderfully efficient way to avoid political thought. If Tharoor is wrong, say so. If Rahul Gandhi’s campaign succeeded, demonstrate that it succeeded. If Modi's government has done something worthy of praise, acknowledge it without enrolling in the BJP. This used to be called political judgment. Now it apparently requires a permission slip from the party headquarters.

The greater danger is that this transformation does not merely make citizens more tribal but also changes politicians themselves. Once leaders discover that supporters reward certainty and punish admission of error, they acquire an incentive to become increasingly certain. They stop correcting themselves because correction looks like weakness. They stop praising opponents because praise looks like betrayal, and they stop listening to criticism because criticism is interpreted as disloyalty.

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Eventually, the leader begins believing his own mythology. And then his supporters begin defending the mythology. We then arrive at the perfect political arrangement, with a leader who cannot admit he is wrong and supporters who cannot imagine that he could be. The irony is that the cult of personality also degrades the quality of the leaders we choose.

Once voters consume political personalities as brands, selection becomes a popularity contest masquerading as political judgment. The question is no longer whether someone is competent, honest, intellectually serious or capable of governing, but whether he makes our side feel good. That is an astonishingly low bar for selecting people who will control armies, economies, foreign policy, taxation, institutions and the machinery of the state. But social media has always been wonderfully democratic about lowering standards.

Technology has industrialised the ancient human appetite for hero worship. The ancient king required a court poet and the modern politician requires a smartphone. The court poet, at least, had to work rather harder.

Once political allegiance becomes an identity, changing one's mind becomes psychologically expensive. You are no longer admitting that your politician was wrong; you are admitting that you were wrong. And human beings are inveterately reluctant to do that, particularly after announcing their opinions to thousands of followers and spending years abusing everyone who disagreed with them.

So, the tribe hardens, the leader grows larger, criticism becomes treason, and the citizen disappears.

This is why Rahul Gandhi’s andhbhakt observation deserves to be rescued from the parliamentary comedy surrounding it and turned back upon all of us. An andhbhakt is not simply somebody who supports the wrong politician. He is somebody who has surrendered the faculty of judgment to the politician he supports.

A democracy requires citizens who can say, "My leader is wrong"; it requires opposition politicians who can say, "The government has done something right"; it requires party members who can say, "Our leader’s strategy has failed"; and it requires voters who can change their minds without having to change their identities.

Perhaps, therefore, we should stop congratulating ourselves on how politically engaged we have become merely because we can produce a dozen angry comments before breakfast. We are not necessarily more politically informed. We may simply have become more efficiently tribal.

The real danger of the larger-than-life leader is not that he becomes powerful. It is that we become incapable of imagining him being wrong. And the moment a democracy loses that capacity, it has already surrendered something far more valuable than an election. It has surrendered its judgment.

The author is a National Award winner for Best Narration and an independent political analyst. Views expressed are personal.