Arthur Hope , 2nd Baron Rankeillour Arthur Oswald James Hope , 2nd Baron Rankeillour ( 7 May 1897 – 26 May 1958 ) was a British politician , soldier and administrator . He was a Conservative and served as Member of Parliament for Nuneaton from 1924 to 1929 and for Birmingham Aston from 1931 to 1939 , after which he was Governor of the Madras Presidency of British India from 1940 to 1946 . Hope was born to the first Lord Rankeillour in 1897 and had his early education in England . He served with distinction in France during the First World War and entered public life soon after his military service was over . He served as Conservative member of parliament for Nuneaton and later for Birmingham Aston . In 1940 , he was appointed Governor of Madras and served till 1946 . Hope married Grizel Gilmour in 1919 and had four daughters . He died on 26 May 1958 , nineteen days after his 61st birthday . Early life . Arthur Oswald James Hope was born to James Fitzalan Hope , 1st Baron Rankeillour , by his marriage to Mabel Ellen Riddell , at Marylebone , England on 7 May 1897 . His father had served as a Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons . Arthur was the eldest of four children , the others being Henry John Hope , 3rd Baron Rankeillour ( 1899 – 1967 ) , Joan Mary Hope , and Richard Frederick Hope ( 1901 – 1964 ) . Hope was educated at The Oratory School and at Sandhurst . He joined the Coldstream Guards in 1914 at the outbreak of the First World War and rose to be a Captain . He was wounded in action in France and was mentioned in dispatches . He was awarded the Military Cross and the Croix de Guerre . Public life . Hope left the army at the conclusion of the First World War and entered public life . He joined the Conservative Party and at the 1924 general election was elected to the Parliament of the United Kingdom from the Nuneaton constituency in Warwickshire . Hope served a total of fourteen years in the House of Commons , representing Nuneaton from 1924 to 1929 and Birmingham Aston from 1931 to 1940 . At the 1935 election , he beat his nearest rival by a margin of 10 , 355 votes . He was still a member of the House of Commons when appointed as Governor of Madras but gave up his seat , thereby causing a by - election . He was also a fine cricketer and played a first class match for the British Army against Cambridge University at Fenners Ground on 7 June 1926 . Hope served as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to Colonel George Lane Fox , Secretary for Mines from 1924 to 1926 and was a whip from 1935 to 1946 , first as an unpaid Assistant Whip in 1935 , then as an unpaid Lord of the Treasury from 1935 to 1937 , as Vice - Chamberlain of the Household from May 1937 to October 1937 and finally as Treasurer of the Household from 1937 to 1939 . As Governor of Madras . Hope was appointed Governor of Madras in 1940 and succeeded John Erskine , Lord Erskine on 12 March 1940 . Hope served as the Governor of Madras throughout the Second World War . Following the Japanese conquest of Burma and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands , there were strong apprehensions about possible Japanese attacks on coastal Indian cities . On 18 April 1942 , in a secret communication to Lord Linlithgow , the Viceroy of India , Hope described reports of a Japanese force heading towards India . There were Japanese air raids on the coastal towns of Vizagapatam and Cocanada on 6 April 1942 followed by sea attacks on Madras port . Hope responded by evacuating commercial and administrative establishments and business offices along the Madras coast and moving them inland . Madras was in a state of emergency when Hope took over as the last elected government had resigned in October 1939 . The Quit India Movement was started in 1942 and an Anti - British campaign was launched . The provincial governments responded with a crackdown . Hope imposed censorship of newspapers in the Presidency and reporting on internal politics was suppressed . In protest against the government ' s actions , newspapers all over India were suspended for a day . Hope responded by withdrawing special privileges accorded to striking newspapers . The government also imposed censorship of Indian - language films . A provincial propaganda officer , G . D . B . Harvey was appointed to promote propaganda films in support of the British war effort . In 1943 , the government issued an order under the Defence of India rules restricting the size of indigenously made films to 11 , 000 feet . In the beginning , the provincial leadership of the Indian National Congress under Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari was strongly opposed to India ' s forcible involvement in the Second World War . But later , Rajagopalachari changed his mind and spoke in support of the British war effort even while his colleagues in New Delhi were still agitating against the war . Due to economic reasons , the different battalions of the Madras Regiment had been disbanded in stages . With the transferring of the 1st Battalion in 1928 , the Madras Regiment ceased to exist . When Hope became Governor in 1940 , he tried to revive the Madras Regiment and canvassed for the same . Due to the efforts of Hope , the Madras Regiment was revived in 1942 and Hope was appointed the regiment ' s first Colonel - in - chief . A training centre was raised at Madukkarai in Coimbatore district in July 1942 and the regiment fought with distinction in the Burma campaign . Hope ' s tenure came to an end on 26 February 1946 and he was succeeded by Henry Foley Knight who served as the Acting Governor till the arrival of Hope ' s designated successor Archibald Edward Nye . In 1945 , Hope inaugurated a polytechnic college in Coimbatore which was later named " Arthur Hope Polytechnic " in his honour . The polytechnic was later upgraded to a college of science and technology and renamed Government College of Science and Technology in 1950 . Though the college was renamed and moved to a new campus , the area where it was originally located is still being called as " Hope College " . Death . Hope returned to the United Kingdom in 1946 . He died on 26 May 1958 at the age of 61 . Honours . Hope was made a Grand Commander of the Indian Empire in 1939 just before his appointment as Governor of Madras . Arthur Hope succeeded to the barony on the death of his father , the 1st Baron on 14 February 1949 . Family . On 2 June 1919 , at the age of 22 , Hope married Grizel Gilmour , the second daughter of Brigadier - General Sir Robert Gordon Gilmour ( 1857 – 1939 ) and Lady Susan Lygon ( 1870 – 1962 ) . The couple had four daughters : On Hope ' s death in 1958 , due to the absence of a male heir , the barony passed on to his brother , Henry John Hope ( 1899 – 1967 ) .