This line has been taken from George Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant", which is not exactly an essay, it is a sort of reporting. Here 'I' refers to the author himself and the phrase 'large number of people" suggests the native Burmese people.

            The Burmese people hated the author because he was "the subdivisional police officer of the town" under the British Authority. And these people were enslaved to British Imperialism, which is described by the author as "an evil thing". And the imperialistic oppression of the British authority ran rampant in Burma. As a result there was a strong anti-European feeling in the mind of Burmese. So, they hated and disliked our author George Orwell.

             Actually they are so tortured and tormented by the British rulers, that they belch out their anger in every step. And this is only a petty example of this.