Biodata

Biodata (pronounced by-oh-dar-tah)

(1) A type of resume or curriculum vitae, regarding an individual's education and work history, especially in the context of a selection process.

(2) An semi-standardized document created to list the salient features of those in the Hindu marriage market.

1950s: A compound word, the construct being bio(graphical) + data.  Bio is from the Ancient Greek βίο (bío), combining form and stem of βίος (bios) (life).  Data is borrowed from the Latin data, nominative plural of datum (that is given), neuter past participle of dō (I give) and the doublet of date.  In English use, data is frequently used as both a singular & plural, datum now restricted almost entirely to technical writing by those for whom the distinction (or who fear being shamed by fastidious colleagues) matters although pedants do delight is pointing out what they insist remains an error.  This looseness isn't anything new; by the 1640s data meant "a fact given or granted" an organic evolution from the original use in Latin when it conveyed the sense of "a fact given as the basis for calculation in mathematical problems" and the connection with numbers has in the twentieth century become stronger.  In the early 1900s the predominant meaning was "numerical facts collected for future reference" and the meaning "transmittable and storable information by which computer operations are performed" seems first to have been documented in 1946.  Probably few words have been so associated as data & computers: Data-processing is from 1954 (although for years the industry seemed unable to decide if it was electronic data processing (EDP) or just data processing (DP) and the database (also as data-base) (a "structured collection of data stored in a manner it can be retrieved, analysed & and manipulated using a computer" was first described in 1958.  The data-entry operator (a person who transcribes data from physical sources (usually paper) into a computer, usually via keyboard entry) was distinct segment of the labor market by 1969 but was effectively extinct within less than two generations, a victim of technological advances.  Biodata is a noun; there is no accepted word biodatum and the plural of biodata is biodatas.

From HR to the marriage market

Biodata began life as part of the jargon of US industrial and organizational psychology.  To the HR professionals, it was a way of standardising the biographical data submitted in CVs but, being standardised, the information was inherently structured and thus suitable for storage and analysis, something which became increasingly interesting as big-machine databases became ubiquitous in corporations.  As early as the 1960s, corporate HR operations began applying the analytical techniques of psychology and criminology to their structured biodata sets, the predictive ability of the methods based on the axiom that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.  While crunching biodata does not predict all future behaviors, it does produce an indicative number, a measure of that to which future behaviors should tend.  Although claimed to be value-free, based as it is on the factual, not introspection and subjective judgements, biodata analysis has attracted criticism because of the bias inherent in the data chosen.

Extract from Lindsay Lohan's biodata.

Sample biodata for young lady from the Rajput caste.

In the twenty-first century, as the internet reached critical-mass in South Asian countries where the arranged marriage remains culturally embedded, biodata quickly became the preferred term to describe the résumé parents submit to other parents to permit unsuitable boys and girls to be culled from the list of prospective suitors.  Now often done through marriage sites (a specialised type of social media), the biodata typically includes such information as caste, education, work history, financial status, family background, height, weight, skin-tone and a photo.  However, although many sites offer structured templates, there's much variation although it's not clear whether there's any tendency towards a consistency of layout or content based on caste, geographical origin or anything else.  One thing that hasn't changed is that biodata documents are still formatted in a way inherently suited to the printed A4 page, though to reflect the cultural preference of parents.  Despite the mobile device use being high even among the older demographic in South Asia, when culling potential suitors, the big space of the A4 page seems still preferable to the small screen.

A cultural phenomenon which would be understood by structural functionalists is that despite the caste discrimination being outlawed in India for over seventy years, caste status and preferences remain frequently included in the biodata on Indian marriage sites.  Caste discrimination and untouchability were officially abolished in India with the adoption of the Constitution of India Act (26 January 1950), article 15 prohibiting discrimination on the basis of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth.  Building on this, the (Congress) government of India passed the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) (1989), which provided additional protections for Dalits (formerly known as untouchables) and other marginalized groups. Despite this seventy-odd year tradition of structural equality, caste discrimination persists in India (as it does to some degree in probably every culture) and remains a significant element in biodata .   

Quondam

Quondam (pronounced kwon-duhm or kwon-dam)

(1) As a pronominal, former; one-time; having been formerly.

(2) As a pronominal, of an earlier time.

1580s: An adaptation of the earlier (1530-1550) from earlier use as an adverb (formerly) and noun (former holder of an office, title or position), from the Latin adverb quondam (formerly, at some time, at one time; once in a while) the construct being quom, cum (when, as), from the primitive Indo-European root kwo- (stem of relative and interrogative pronouns) + -dam (the demonstrative ending).  Quondam is an adjective, quondamship is a noun and quondamly is an adverb; the noun quondam is now archaic but can be used in the sense of “one’s ex” and if one is prolific in the generation of quondamship, the noun plural is quondams.  According to one severe critic on Urban Dictionary, “quondamness” is defined as “A thesaurus full of imaginary yet important sounding words that shoddy authors use in order to find strange obscure or even imaginary words to use in their stories, in the hopes of sounding more intelligent than they will ever be.” 

For a simple concept ("used to be"), quondam enjoys an impressive number of synonyms including former, previous, erstwhile, old, one-time, past, late, once, whilom, sometime, defunct, bygone, vanished, gone, departed, extinct and expired.  Some (extinct, expired, defunct) have specific technical meanings which limit their use while others (late, departed, gone) are most associated with the dead but otherwise quondam is available as a way of enriching a text.  In informal use, quondam has been used as a noun in the sense of one's ex-partner being “a quondam” and, as a re-purposed literary word, it has been adapted to the social media age with helpful, non-standard forms coined:

Quondam: One's ex-partner.

Quondaming: The act of dumping a partner.

Quondamed: The act of being so dumped.

Quaondamer: One who dumps a partner (in the form “serial quondamer”, applied to those who frequently dump).

Quondamee: One who has been quonadmed by a quandamer (in the form “serial quondamee”, applied to those frequently dumped).

Quondamish: An act which can be interpreted as being dumped but requires confirmation.

Quondamesque: Behavior which suggests having been dumped.

Quondamism: The study of dumped ex-partners (a branch of behaviorism).

Quondamist: A practitioner of quondamism (employed often by internet gossip sites) who can distinguish between genuine quondamees and those exhibiting quondam-like characteristics.  The experts have developed predictive models which they apply to work out who is next to be quondamed.

A quondam atheist who changed his mind: The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith (2010) by Peter Hitchens.

As a pronominal, writers like to use somewhat obscure quondam when drawing attention to those who were once “something” have for whatever reason become “something else”.  There are quondam atheists who became Christians including the (1) British academic & writer CS Lewis (1898–1963) who seems most to have be influenced in his conversion by JRR Tolkien (1892–1973), the US journalist Lee Strobel (b 1952) who set out to disprove Christianity after his wife converted, but the hunter ended up captured by the game, becoming a Christian, (3) the Physician-geneticist Francis Collins (b 1950) who lead the Human Genome Project and was either atheist or agnostic during his early scientific career but became affected by his encounters with expressions of faith among his patients although reading CS Lewis seems also have had a profound effect, (4) the writer Peter Hitchens (b 1951) who was a most truculent militant atheist (more so even than his brother Christopher) but returned to the faith of his youth after a period of personal reflection (which soon he’d call “soul-searching”) and witnessing “the consequences of godlessness” (although he writes for the tabloid Mail on Sunday which can’t be good for the soul), (5) the writer and broadcaster Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) who as well as being quondam atheist was also quondam Marxist (a common coupling) and, like a 40-a-day smoker who has kicked the habit, having had his fun, he became a most moralistic Christian and (6) TS Eliot (1888–1965) who probably never was a quondam atheist but certainly had his moments of doubt so may qualify as an (off & on) quondam agnostic until his thirties and some of his later poetry does suggest he was keeping to a Godly path.

In political science there was a whole school of quondam communists of the “God that Failed” school, often arrayed in lists by conservatives anxious to rub in the “I told you so” moment.  The favorites though are the quondam Trotskyites (“Trots” to friend & foe alike) and while variously they’ve swung to some to conservatism, liberalism, nationalism or even God, it’s remarkable how many include the term “ex-Trotskyist” in their biodata, there being something romantic about comrade Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) and his Fourth International not shared by either comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) who ordered his murder or Karl Marx (1818-1883) although the latter should be treated sympathetically because of his many troubles including constipation (measured in days) but by far the greatest distraction must have been the painful genital boils.  In April 1867, in one of the many letters he sent to his collaborator Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), he lamented: “I shan’t bore you by explaining [the] carbuncles on my posterior and near the penis, the final traces of which are now fading but which made it extremely painful for me to adopt a sitting and hence a writing posture. I am not taking arsenic because it dulls my mind too much and I need to keep my wits about me.”

The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and Where is it Going? (1937) by Leon Trotsky.  Three years after publication, comrade Stalin's assassins finally tracked down comrade Trotsky and murdered him; the weapon was an ice axe.

There was the writer and eternal enfant terrible Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011), in his youth a member of the International Socialists, who drifted away gradually but perceptibly before re-shaping his world-view into Islam vs the West after the 9/11 attacks, becoming a fellow-traveller with the neo-cons.  Across the Atlantic there was Irving Kristol (1920-2009) whose time with the Young People's Socialist League seems to have been more than youthful impetuosity because his faction was the then unfashionable Trotskyist group opposed to the Soviet state being built by comrade Stalin.  The extent to which his hard-right conservative wife changed his intellectual direct can be debated but for those who like “nurture vs nature” discussions, their son William Kristol (b 1952) was born a right-winger and has never deviated.  Perhaps the most famous quondam Trotskyist & Communist (he was inconsistent in his self-identification) of the Cold War years was the quondam Soviet spy Whittaker Chambers (1901-1961) whose testimony was crucial in the trial of State Department official Alger Hiss (1904–1996), the case on which the young congressman Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) built his reputation as an anti-communist.  Nixon later became one of many quondam presidents but the only one rendered thus by having to resign in disgrace.

Lindsay Lohan's quondam list (2013), partially redacted for publication by In Touch magazine.

Because her hectic lifestyle had for a decade-odd been chronicled (accurately and not) by the tabloid press, even before In Touch magazine in 2014 published a partially redacted list of three-dozen names Lindsay Lohan had in her own hand compiled of those with whom she’d enjoyed intimacy, she already had a reputation as a serial quondammer.  The list contained 36 names which seemed a reasonable achievement for someone then 27 although it wasn’t clear whether the count of three-dozen quandams was selective or exhaustive and upon publication it produced reactions among those mentioned ranging from “no comment” to denials in the style of a Clintonesque “I did not have sex with that woman”.  Other points of interest included Ms Lohan's apparently intact short & long-term memory and her commendably neat handwriting.  She seems to favor the “first letter bigger” style in which the format is “all capitals” but the first letter of a sentence or with proper nouns such as names is larger.  In typography, the idea is derived from the “drop cap”, a centuries-old tradition in publishing where the opening letter of a sentence is many times the size of the rest, the text wrapping around the big letter.  In many cases, a drop cap was an elaborate or stylized version of the letter.  Her writing was praised as neat and effortlessly legible.  

Ms Lohan was about as pleased the list had been published as Gore Vidal (1925–2012) might have been if gifted the complete anthology (deluxe edition, leather bound with commentaries by the author) of the works of Joyce Carol Oates (b 1938).  It transpired the list of 36 was written as part of the fifth step of the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) programme Ms Loan was in 2013 undertaking at the Betty Ford Clinic; that is known informally as the “Confession” step and it encourages members to acknowledge the harm caused to themselves and others in their pursuit of alcohol: “Admitted to God, to oneself, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”  Legally, despite being tagged “confession”, US courts have never extended to the AA the same status of privileged communication which conferred on what passes between penitent and priest in the confession box so committing one’s sins to paper is doubly dangerous.  Subsequently interviewed, Ms Lohan said she could “neither confirm or deny” the accuracy of the list but seemed to confirm what In Touch had published appeared to be a photograph of what she’d written.  That was an interesting distinction to draw but who took the photograph remains a mystery although she concluded: “Someone when I was moving must have taken a photo of it”, adding: “So that’s a really personal thing and that’s unfortunate.”  Ms Lohan’s best-known quondam remains former special friend Samantha Ronson.

There is also much quondamism among those disillusioned by the cults of which they were once devoted followers and there have been many confessed Freemasons who abandoned the pseudo-faith, denouncing it as they stormed from the temple vowing never to return.  Although the Freemasons have centuries of experience in conducting cover-ups and are suspected to have infiltrated many news organizations, the fragmentation of the media in the internet age has meant stories sometimes do hit the headlines.  In 2024, the Rev Canon Dr Joseph Morrow (b 1954) not only resigned as Grand Master of The Freemasons of Scotland but also ceased to be a Mason.  Dr Morrow’s very public exit from the cult saw a flurry of speculation about what low skulduggery might have been involved, suggestions the he had been undermined by a “traditionalist” Masonic faction opposed to his plans to “modernize the craft”.  The conservatives clearly liked things the way then were and it seems there were tensions between members, some spooked by Dr Morrow pledged to oversee reform and widen recruitment, saying: “We will expand the global presence of Scottish freemasonry by inspiring our members to enjoy their involvement and by attracting new members.  This will be achieved by cultivating a positive culture of inclusivity and a meaningful impact on our communities.”  That must have sounded ominously like a DEI (diversity, equity & inclusion) agenda, not welcome by many in the all-male institution that is Scottish-rite Masonry and hearing Dr Morrow speak of “greater transparency” would have sat not well with those who prize Masonic secrecy and opaqueness.

Quondom Grand Master & quondom Freemason Dr Joseph Morrow in his Masonic Grand Master regalia.  Note the ceremonial apron being worn underneath jacket, a style almost unique to The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry.

Suggestions were published alleging Dr Morrow left the cult because he’d learned the traditionalist faction was plotting and scheming against him, planning to propose an alternative grand master while he was on holiday in the Far East; his departure was said to be a case of “jumping before he was pushed”.  Circling the aprons, a spokesman for the Grand Lodge (1) denied any dissident members were plotting and scheming a palace coup, (2) claimed Dr Morrow had never raised “significant concerns”, (3) asserted: “No other candidate was planning to stand against him” and (4) maintained “Dr Morrow’s decision to resign was made for his own personal reasons.”  He concluded: “We are grateful for the huge contribution he has made to Scottish Freemasonry over many years and wish him well for the future.”  Whatever really happened, following his abrupt departure, the quondom Grand Master is also a quondom Freemason.

Caste

Caste (pronounced kahst)

(1) In sociology, an endogamous and hereditary social group limited to persons of the same rank, occupation, economic position, etc, and having mores distinguishing it from other such groups.

(2) Any rigid system of social distinctions.

(3) In Hinduism, any of the social divisions into which Hindu society is traditionally divided, each caste having its own privileges and limitations, transferred by inheritance from one generation to the next.

(4) In entomology, one of the distinct forms among polymorphous social insects, performing a specialized function in the colony, as queen, worker or soldier.

1545-1555: From the Portuguese & Spanish casta (race, breed, ancestry), noun use of casta, feminine of casto, from the Classical Latin castus (pure, chaste), from castus (cut off, separated; pure) the notion being "cut off" from faults and was the past participle of carere (to be cut off from (and related to castration)).  The ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European kes (to cut) from which Latin later picked-up cassus (empty, void).  It was originally spelled cast in English and later often merged with the noun cast in its secondary sense "sort, kind, style."  Many of the derived forms (half-caste, quarter-caste, castless, outcaste (actually modeled on the English outcast) et al) were coined under the Raj and reflect the concerns and prejudices of the colonialists.  Caste & casteism are nouns; the noun plural is castes.

Application to Hindu social groups was picked up by English in India in the early 1600s and the English used the Portuguese casta (the earlier casta raça (unmixed race) comes from the same Latin root)) but the spelling soon became caste.  Interestingly, the phrase "caste system" seems not to have been in use (at least in surviving documents) until the 1840s.  Caste differs from class in that caste has come to mean a group of persons set apart by economic, social, religious, legal, or political criteria, such as occupation, status, religious denomination, legal privilege, skin colour, or some other physical characteristic.  In the west, over time, wealth or other desirable characteristics can permit upward movement between classes whereas in societies with defined (even if informally) caste systems, the distinctions tended to be static and inter-generational.

The Raj and after

Although it exists in many regions and religions, the best-known caste system is that of the Hindus, probably because, under the Raj, it was well suited to the purposes of British colonial administration, run as it mostly was by the class-conscious English.  The pre-Raj historical development of caste is contested but its origins are certainly in ancient India although modified to suit the needs of the various elites, the two most recent being the Raj and the government in New Delhi.  Historically, the Hindu castes, as a codified structure, existed only as divisions within the political elite, priests, intellectuals and generals and it was only later, as the means of of communications and methods of centralized control improved, that it was extended to previously casteless social groups which became differentiated caste communities.  Under the Raj, the colonial administrators rendered rigidity to the caste organization and until 1920, permitted only those of the upper castes to be appointed to senior civil service positions.  This changed in the 1920s, not because of any sympathy by the British towards notions of social justice but because of social unrest and agitation for independence so the Raj applied the classic colonial fix which for centuries the British did better than anyone: take the side of the oppressed minority.  From then on, the Raj enacted a policy of affirmative action by reserving a certain percentage of civil service positions for the lower castes.

Despite the impression in the west, the new constitution of independent India didn’t actually abolish caste but it did outlaw discrimination against lower castes by essentially (and unsuccessfully) proscribing untouchability and central and state governments continue to use caste as a mechanism to promote positive discrimination in education and employment.  The implications of this, particularly the unintended consequences, are not without controversy.  Although there exists a bewildering number of sub-castes, the four major hereditary castes are:

Brahmins: priests, scholars and teachers.
Kshatriyas: rulers, warriors and administrators.
Vaishyas: agriculturalists and merchants.
Shudras: workers and service providers.

In the narrow technical sense, the untouchables (popularly still known as Dalits, although the government has mandated Scheduled Castes) are not part of the caste system but, by outsiders, are regarded as the caste system's lowest rung.  Dalit was from the Hindi दलित (dalit) (downtrodden, oppressed), from the Sanskrit दलित (dalita) (broken, scattered)).  Few institutions have proved as suitable for adaptation to the structured databases of the internet than the Indian marriage market which works by determining compatibility, based on matching the values in the fields; collectively, what a candidate enters into these fields constitutes their "biodata" and on the basis of this they will hope to be judged a suitable boy or girl.  In India, it's widely acknowledged that while the algorithms which underpin the sites are helpful as an exclusionary tool (and thus a great time-saver), the actual selection process of from what remains lie still with the families & individual prospective brides & grooms, the relative influence varying between households.  In contemporary India, while as a system of social stratification caste remains one of the most powerful cultural dynamics, there is now more reluctance to discuss its operation and there is some evidence of changing attitudes among younger generations, especially the urbanized.  However, in the rural areas where most of the population lives, caste seems still to be as crucial a determinate of structure as ever.

The informal social stratifications which emerge organically in an institution like a high school are interesting because they are determined by both outside influences and their interaction with the formal stratifications inherent in the educational system (age, academic & sporting achievement, the geographical catchment from which the cohort is drawn etc).  The term clique is often used and in the microcosm of a school, that's probably the best word because unlike a caste, movement between cliques is possible, depending only on group acceptance.  Clique was borrowed from the French, from the Old French cliquer which was imitative (on the idea of "click") and thought to have been influenced by claque (a group of people hired to applaud or boo (literally “a slap; a clap")).

Any review of the work of anthropologists, sociologists and behavioral zoologists would probably confirm that on planet Earth, among all groups of humans or non-humans which have been organized into any sort of collective arrangement, some form of a system of social stratification can be identified.  In human cultures, some have for centuries operated in the manner of castes in that they were unchanging and based entirely on descent with social movement either culturally or legally proscribed while some came to acknowledge wealth could permit "upward mobility".  In rare cases this could be almost instant but more commonly was something which unfolded over several generations, each becoming more refined than the last, the combination of gentility and financial largess towards their erstwhile "betters" (effectively bribes or "cash for honors") being rewarded with titles and appointments to offices within the establishment.  In the West, this lent societies an economic and cultural dynamic often lacking in places where hierarchies tended to be static.