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 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 Victor Hope, 2nd Marquess of 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 assumed his post, as the last elected government had resigned in October 1939. An anti-British campaign, the Quit India Movement, was launched in 1942. 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.
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.
I have always felt reading the history of the Madras army in the old days that there must be something fundamentally wrong in ignoring the Madrasis in recent years. When you read the history of the past from 1750 onwards, you will see that the Madras troops did a great part of the fighting in India in those days and were nearly always successful. It only required a good lever and a good office to bring a Madrasi back to his proper place and, therefore, almost from the first week that I was in the country, I have impressed on the late Commander-in-chief and his successor the fact that Madrasis were as good as, if not better, than anybody else and they have fought, are fighting and would fight again, as well as any other people in India, or indeed in the whole world.
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.
In 1945, Hope inaugurated a polytechnic college built by G. D. Naidu 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 called "Hope College".
