The successful Malayan campaign, and the subsequent Burma campaign brought under Japanese administration a large number of Indian expatriates. Although not essentially sympathetic to the Japanese (some were even hostile), they held substantial nationalist motives, and sought to exploit the window offered by the reversal faced by the British forces to drive them out from the Indian sub-continent. In these circumstances, the Japanese military administration encouraged the various disparate Indian nationalist groups in East Asia to form an anti-British alliance. These came together to form the Indian Independence League (IIL), with its headquarters in Singapore. The IIL was also responsible for the welfare of Indian communities in East Asia. From the Japanese point of view, this was primarily a propaganda move of initiating anti-British sentiments among civilians and soldiers in South-east Asia, and some Indian organisations like the Thai-Bharat Cultural Lodge held mistrust of the Japanese, and of local Indians who worked with them. The lodge preferred to work independently, and used Thai-donated equipment and the German embassy in Bangkok to Liaise directly with Subhas Chandra Bose.