【单选题】

India’s nomads have roamed the subcontinent for hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years. The Gadulia Lobar (their name comes from the Hindi words for "cart, " gadulia and "blacksmith, " lohar) are among the best known. In their illustrious past the Gadulia Lohar forged armor for Hindu kings. Today these blacksmiths pitch camp on the outskirts of tiny Indian villages and make simple goods from metal. Others are herders, such as the Rabari, famous throughout western India for their large scarfs and familiarity with all things concerning camel. Some are hunters and plant gatherers. Some are service providers—salt traders, fortune-tellers, magicians.And some are story-tellers, snake charmers, animal doctors, tattooists, basket makers. In total, anthropologists have identified about 500 nomadic groups in India, numbering perhaps 80 million people—around 7 percent of the country’s billion-plus population.

These wanderers were once part of India’s mainstream. They meshed comfortably with the villagers who lived along their annual migration routes. In the 19th century, though, attitudes began to change.British administrators regarded them as vagrants and criminals, sowing prejudice that survived colonial rule. The rapidly modernizing India of call centers and brand-obsessed youth has scant use for tinkers or bear trainers, and cattle herders are in a losing battle with industry and urban sprawl. Fragmented by hierarchy, language, and region, the nomads are ignored by politicians and, in contrast to other downtrodden groups, have reaped few benefits from social welfare schemes.
Just defining the term "nomad" is problematic in Indi
A、Many groups that once definitely fit the category have clustered in slums in a process anthropologists call sedentarization. Yet India remains a rigidly hierarchical society in which birth is often synonymous with destiny. So, mobile or not, India’s nomads are united by a history of poverty and exclusion that continues to this day. probably the biggest human rights crisis you’ve never heard of.
To the lonely few who have taken up the nomads’ cause, a big part of the solution is to provide them with roofs over their heads, or at least an address, which would make it easier for them to get welfare benefits and enroll their kids in school.But such efforts have met fierce resistance from villagers and local politicians, who see the roamers as disreputable outsiders.
India once teemed with such traveling niche workers. Many were first described in detail by aBritish civil servant,D、Ibbetson, in an 1883 report based on census data from the Punjab region. Ibbetson’s observations reflected the prejudices of the day and the widely held belief inBritain that nomads—and especially the dark-skinned Romany-speaking people known as Gypsies—were unchangeable agents of vice. Such attitudes transferred easily to the subcontinent.
What is the author’s attitude towards the nomads
A、SympathetiC、
B．Hostile.
C．OptimistiC、
D．Indifferent.