If you enter Islamabad through GT Road after the Airport chowk, ever since I know, there stands the famous Unity Faith Discipline write-up erected on a small hill. Whispers of challenge still haunt the ways around Quaid e Azam’s given motto.

Dawn did a very interesting background feature on it today … have a read:

It’s really shameful that even after debating for years the correct order of the motto left by Quaid-i-Azam for the nation, our Establishment remains confused in what order to place Unity, Faith and Discipline.

Some years ago Islamabad’s mandarins put up Quaid’s portrait in steel on a hillock on Islamabad Highway near the airport with the words of the motto beneath it — apparently to inspire the people than practice the Quaid’s message themselves.

But the order of the words of the motto in Urdu and English in shining stainless steel on either side of the hillock has changed a few times. The combo picture, as you can see above, shows the latest change — the Urdu and English versions present the motto in different orders. Was it a blunder on the part of the Islamabad authorities or deliberate?

Until President Gen Ziaul Haq arrived on the national scene in 1977 riding the wave of Nizam-i-Mustafa, the order used to be Unity, Faith and Discipline. But the missionary president changed it to Faith, Unity and Discipline, perhaps to rhyme with the ‘Jihad fee Sabeelillah’ that he had added to the motto of the Pakistan Army — an inspiration that served extremely well the US-backed jihad fought against communist Soviet Union in Afghanistan in 1980s.

As conservatism got well entrenched in various branches of the Establishment, someone decided that ‘Faith’ in the Quaid’s saying should get precedence over ‘Unity’. The change caused a furore that prompted several scholars of the Pakistan Movement to vent their views on the Quaid’s beliefs and the message he wished to convey in the order he placed his three points. As the changing times made the Establishment rediscover Quaid-i-Azam’s liberal ideals, the three-point motto was restored to its original form. Is it that the latest change in placing the points in different order in their English and Urdu versions also dictated by changing times? After all our role in the ‘war on terror’ requires our Establishment grounded in English to put Unity on the top while Iman (faith) is more dear to the Urdu-knowing masses.

You can see the NOW version in this post and the previous version in this post.

We don’t practice; we don’t act; we rant and fight!!