Lakshmi left for Singapore in 1940, at the age of 26, where she established a clinic in order to help the poor especially migrant Indian labour to receive medical treatment.
In 1942, during the historic surrender of Singapore by the British colonial power to the Japanese, she came across a lot of nationalist Indians like K. P. Kesava Menon, S. C. Guha, N. Raghavan, and others, who were deliberating over the Japanese proposal to form an Indian army of liberation. While Lakshmi Swaminadhan was extremely enthusiastic about this possibility, she actively participated in the deliberations that finally resulted in the formation of the INA under Gen. Mohan Singh.
