They do not have any land rights; nor are they citizens of any country. The tribe survives on the fathomless water down the generations without any vital connection with the main land. Life and death visit these tribesmen on their watery habitat. It is very exciting to imagine such a marine life; but in reality, to spend even a few days in such a hostile condition, can be absolutely horrifying. However, there is one tribal community, still surviving in the world, which spends the entire lifespan in the vast ocean. They inhabit the vast stretch of water adjacent to the Pacific and Indian Ocean in South East Asia.
The most surprising fact is that they can spend thirteen minutes below the surface of the ocean without any technological aid. It is impossible for any other human communities of the world. They are ‘Bajaus’, the most skilled swimmer tribe of the South East Asia. Living on the surface of water throughout their life, these tribal people are a living miracle to the rest of the world. However, the number of this marine tribe is first dwindling – a tribe that perpetually thrives on wooden canoes.
 Another amazing finding is that these indigenous people are not bonafide citizens of any country. For ages these ‘Bajau’ tribesmen have been surviving on a small canoe in a vast ocean without any citizenship –any right to land. They are still alive only because of their hunting skills  in the deep sea. Generations pass in a skiff – there is no scope for education or opportunity to interact with the so-called civilized society. No governmental schemes are made available to these people who are excluded in the electoral rolls. This tribal group is popularly known as ‘sea-gipsy’ or ‘sea-nomad’.
On the shallow areas of sea coasts the Bajaus build their makeshift resting places. These structures can be disbanded in a few minutes. The horrible tsunami of 2004 could not affect the Bajau people - nature's fury surged beneath their residential units. Bajaus are ignorant of their age because they have never received the fruits of education. To dispel the darkness of night, they still use torches made of cod liver hide or oil. A number of sea-facing villages would often offer them firewood and garments in lieu of freshly-caught sea fish.
A group of researchers has conducted DNA tests and USG of the respiratory system of Bajau people. The reports confirm that the spleen of Bajau tribe is much larger than that of ordinary humans. That is why they can spend some time beneath sea water without any machine assistance. The DNA structure of these tribal people is also quite different from the average mortals. Carbonic Anhydrase – a special kind of enzyme – is produced in their physiological system. This enzyme greatly reduces the flow of carbon di-oxide into blood vessels. Hence, they can hold their breath for a long period of time. Thus, nature's enigmatic principles and weird physiological transformations have enabled this endangered marine tribe to survive against all odds.
One of the basic objectives of Janajati Darpan has been the exploration of such endangered tribes in the global context with special emphasis on the Indian situation. Few of the ethnographers in India would ever recognise the existence of Dhimal tribe in the Naxalbari area of Darjeeling district. Even late Mahasweta Devi admitted in a 2012 Workshop that she had not come across this tribe of North Bengal. We are really happy to discover Garjan Mallick Dhimal, a lone warrior of the Dhimal tribe, and make him contribute an article on the threatened Dhimal culture in the current volume of Janajati Darpan.
Similarly, tribes like Rabha, Kora, Kurukh and Kurmali have remained culturally invisible in the larger academic circle over the last few decades. There have been no attempts to translate the recent literary and critical endeavours of these marginalised indigenous communities. We feel glad to have included the writings of Sushil Kumar Rabha, Dinesh Mudi, Bimal Kumar Toppo, Anadi Nath Mahato and Siripada Bansirar in the current volume to accommodate the unrepresented ‘minor’ voices in the Indian indigenous context even after seventy years of independence. The English renderings of these writings will also pioneer a new generic engagement in the Indian context – Literature of the Endangered Tribes. It will open up a comparative discourse too – between Dalit Literature in English translation and Tribal Literature in English translation. Even Mundari and Ho, two very powerful tribal language communities in Jharkhand, Odisha and some central states, have remained voiceless in the Bengali indigenous writings for many centuries. There had been no efforts to anthologize these indigenous writing traditions.
Most often, they are flatly branded as oral communities with folkloric traditions. The written literature of contemporary Ho and Mundari authors has scarcely been recognised and included in any anthology of local languages. We are confident that the literary inputs of Mundari and Ho writers for this issue of Janajati Darpan will bust the myth of orality as the only literary salience of these excluded indigenous groups. We are specially grateful to Sri Ramchandra Sing Munda, Kartick Chandra Bawaanda and Biren Tubid for contributing their writings and thereby creating a new generic engagement in the context of twenty -first century indigenous writings in English translation.
 Another research area of abiding concern is Bangla Dalit Literature in English translation. In this volume of Janajati Darpan we have attempted continue the practice of bringing more Dalit authors(apart from the likes of Manoranjan Byapari, Manohar Mouli Biswas and Kalyani Thakur Charal) into the ambit of translation. We have included one socially relevant play by the Dalit playwright Raju Das. Shyamal Kumar Pramanik, a noted Dalit novelist, has come up with a number of poems on Dalit consciousness for this edition. Our real discovery for this volume is Niranjan Mandal, a chronicler of Dalit life in the hostile surroundings of the Sunderban delta –tales of perpetual conflict between humans and non-humans in a country of hungry tides. His story on Sunderban finds place in English translation an act that will certainly add to the citable resource-base of Bangla Dalit Liturature in translation, particularly Sundarban studies.  Our efforts will find fruition if comparatist studies of Niranjan Mandal and Amitav Ghosh engage the scholars of Cultural Studies after the publication of this volume.
Since the latter half of the 19th century, non-indigenous scholars like S.C. Roy, D.N.Majumdar, G.A. Grierson, P.O. Bodding, H.H. Risley, Verrier Elwin, Nihar Ranjan Roy, Dinesh Chandra Sen, Suniti Chatterjee etc. have explored various facets of indigenous culture, society and worldviews in many ways. Janajati Darpan 2020 volume continues this tradition of non-indigenous scholarly engagements with indigenous studies. Suhrid Kumar Bhowmik, Kalyan Kumar Chakravorty, Niladri Sekhar Das, Tamal Goswami, Biswajit Halder and Anirban Sahoo have analysed the issue of indigeneity from ethnographic, ecocultural, anthropolinguistic and folkloric perspectives with relevant case studies and field research experiences. We are very happy to receive a scholarly article from Professor Satyanarayan Munda, the Vice-Chancellor of SPM University, Ranchi. It may be regarded as a committed piece of auto-ethnographic engagement in line with his hallowed predecessors S. Jaipal Sing Munda and Ram Dayal Munda.
We have attempted to introduce our readers to the fascinating world of indigenous visual narratives in this volume. Dr Pratip Bhattacharya, Professor at the Rice University, U.S.A. had been very generous in providing some of his best snapshots taken during his extensive ethnic odysseys amongst the indigenous communities of North America and South America –two vast continents with great diversity of indigenous cultures and worldviews. His close interaction with a very pristine way of life also enriches our knowledge and understanding of the global indigenous situation.
To conclude, my debts run deep to the co-editors, Mr. Shyamal Kumar Pramanik and Dr. Anirban Sahu for their relentless service. I am also thankful to all the translators for their spontaneous engagement with the act of translating indigenous texts. Special mention should be made of  Mr. Subhrajyoti Paul, the publisher and  Mr. Sukumar Gupta, the co-ordinator, who deserve accolades for their commitment to the cause of promoting indigenous studies. I hope to receive such unstinted support from all concerned in future also.
                                                Indranil Acharya