Political Renegotiation of Scriptural Spaces in Alamgir Hashmi’s Poetry

This paper examines how Alamgir Hashmi, one of the most widely acknowledged Pakistani poets writing in English, draws on Buddhist, Christian and Muslim scriptural Spaces as a frame of reference and then re-explores them to construct humanist space. This process of political renegotiation of scriptural frames of reference, and reconstruction in poetic space results in an enrichment and widening of appeal without decreasing the significance of, or challenging sacred space. In this process Hashmi also cleverly constructs a shared space of suffering between the seers and the Pakistani poet writing in English, since their vision seems to be beyond the masses.