It was part of your religion to hate the British.

Taken at face value, the line suggests a culture in which political animus has been absorbed into identity so thoroughly that it functions like creed: hatred is not merely permitted but ritually expected. The phrasing implies inherited, communal instruction (“part of your religion”), pointing to how national or sectarian loyalties can harden into moral absolutes and become self-justifying. In Davis’s work, such a sentiment would typically serve to expose the pressures of group belonging—how communities teach members what to feel, whom to fear, and how prejudice can masquerade as virtue. The quote’s force lies in its indictment of unexamined hostility as a kind of faith.