LAHORE: Singer and Qawwal Amjad Sabri’s funeral in Karachi certainly became a public affair on Thursday as a large number of people had poured on to the streets of Pakistani port city to mourn the assassination of a fabulous young artist who had touched his audience and fans in an amazing way.
Amjad’s funeral should go down in history as one of the biggest events of its kind, though all world historians agree that the largest-ever funeral seen or witnessed was that of the former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Conjeevaram Natarajan Annadurai (1909-1969).
It is estimated that between 10 and 15 million people were on roads to attend the funeral of Annadurai on February 3, 1969. His funeral had the highest attendance of any such event till that day in 1969, hence earning it a Guinness Record. In fact, it remains the biggest till date.
Popularly known as “Ana,” he had served as his state’s chief minister from 1967 to 1969. He died of cancer just two years into office. Here follows a brief list of some other large Pakistani and international funerals, based on both the number of attendants and estimated television audience, during the last century:
Soviet leader Lenin (Moscow, January 21, 1924), Radio inventor and Italian businessman Guglielmo Marconi (Rome, July 20, 1937), Mahatma Gandhi (New Delhi, February 6, 1948), Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah (September 12, 1948, Karachi), former USSR leader Joseph Stalin (Moscow, March 6–9, 1953), John F. Kennedy (November 25, 1963), Jawaharlal Nehru (New Delhi May 28, 1964), Winston Churchill (London-- 30 January 1965), Vietnam’s leader Ho Chi Minh (Hanoi city, September 9, 1969), Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser (October 1, 1970, Cairo), legendary Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum (Cairo-February 5, 1975), Chinese leader Zhou Enlai (Beijing January 11, 1976), another great Chinese leader Mao Zedong (Beijing, September 18, 1976), great American singer Elvis Presley (Memphis city, August 16–18, 1977), Korian leader Park Chung-hee (November 1, 1979—Seoul), Bangladeshi leader Ziaur Rahman (Dhaka, June 2, 1981), Filipino leader Benigno Aquino (August 31, 1983-Manila), Japanese Emperor Showa (February 24, 1989, Tokyo), General Ziaul Haq (August 19, 1988, Islamabad), Ayatollah Khomeini (June 4-5, 1989, Tehran), Formula One Race Champion Ayrton Senna (May 4, 1994, Sau Paulo city), Lady Diana (September 6, 1997), King Hussein of Jordan (February 8, 1999, Amman city), Queen Elizabeth or the Queen Mother (London, March 15, 2003), Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al-Nahyan (November 2, 2004), Pope John Paul II (Vatican city, April 8, 2005), Benazir Bhutto (December 27, 2007) Filipino leader Corazon Aquino (August 5, 2009), North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il (2011), Indian Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray (November 18, 2012) and Nelson Mandela (December 10–15, 2013) etc.