ISLAMABAD, Nov 20: For 58 years every Pakistani child has been taught that “Unity, Faith, Discipline” was the guiding motto that the founding father left for the nation to progress.

But now it seems that all these years the nation had got the order wrong as the motto inscribed in English and Urdu in large letters on the two sides of a hillock on the Islamabad Highway has been changed by the government to read “Faith, Unity, Discipline”.

General Ziaul Haq, perhaps the most divisive military dictator to have ruled Pakistan, had got the motto inscribed in the early 1980s. He had also given a new motto to Pakistan army “Iman, Taqwa, Jihad” as he fought the US-backed ‘jihad’ against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Veteran politician Mahmud Ali from erstwhile East Pakistan takes credit for making the government change the order of Quaid- i-Azam’s motto.

Mr Mahmud Ali, who has been included as a minister without portfolio in almost every cabinet since the dismemberment of Quaid-i-Azam’s Pakistan in 1971, says he sent a memorandum to Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz asking him to “correct the order”. The prime minister agreed and issued instructions that the historic words be rearranged in all state documents and public places.

However the prime minister was not found using the new order when he spoke to journalists, nor did President Gen Pervez Musharraf.

Mr Mahmud Ali first disclosed the so-called discrepancy in the order of words in the motto at a function on Quaid’s birth anniversary in September.

Asked by Dawn for his comments, Mr Zawwar Hussain Zaidi, head of the Quaid-i-Azam Papers project, who was present on the occasion, said the Quaid had used the words either way. “What is important, however, is to translate the guiding principles he gave us into action,” Mr Zaidi added.

“Remember, within a span of seven years the Quaid was able to weld the scattered Muslims of South Asia into a nation and inspired them to struggle for achieving a homeland which they were able to achieve under his superb leadership.”

Quaid’s motto “Faith, Unity Discipline” is also published in the Wikipedia encyclopaedia, as well as mounted at Karachi international airport building.