This article examines the Indian indentured ship as a heterotopic space, using Michel Foucault's heterotopia and heterochronia, Stuart Hall's prescriptive discourse, and Marianne Hirsch's postmemories. It analyses how the ship disrupted caste hierarchies, enforced egalitarianism, and altered social dynamics. Analysing the folk songs documented by Ved Prakash Vatuk and Badri Narayan, alongside the contemporary poetics of Mahadai Das and Khal Torabully, the article repositions them as counter-archives that challenge the regime of truth by reconstructing migrant histories and origins. It argues that in the absence of archival records, these mnemonic products act as heterochronies that rupture the linear colonial timeline, generating a decolonized historical truth about indentured migration. Further, the article reveals that the indentured ship remains a fracture in time, shaping diasporic consciousness, altering transgenerational memory, and producing new knowledge through oral and literary traditions; thus, it contributes to broader discussions on Indian indentured displacement, identity, and transoceanic histories.
