In which year was Pandit Ravi Shankar awarded the Bharat Ratna?

Explanation

Pandit Ravi Shankar (1920-2012), the world-famous sitar maestro, was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour, in 1999.

Ravi Shankar was born in Varanasi. As a young man, he toured Europe and the United States with the dance troupe of his elder brother, the dancer Uday Shankar. In 1938, he gave up dancing to study the sitar under the great musician Ustad Allauddin Khan of Maihar, with whom he trained for about seven years in the strict traditional manner. He later married Allauddin Khan's daughter, Annapurna Devi, who was also a gifted musician. He worked as music director of All India Radio, where he founded the Indian National Orchestra (Vadya Vrinda). From the 1950s onwards, he toured the world and did more than anyone else to introduce Indian classical music to Western audiences. He worked with the violinist Yehudi Menuhin, with whom he recorded the album "West Meets East", and he taught the sitar to George Harrison of the Beatles. He performed at the Monterey Pop Festival (1967), the Woodstock Festival (1969) and the Concert for Bangladesh (1971). He composed music for Satyajit Ray's "Apu Trilogy" and for Richard Attenborough's film "Gandhi". He won several Grammy Awards and received Japan's Praemium Imperiale (1997). He was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1986. His daughters are the sitar player Anoushka Shankar and the singer Norah Jones.

Why not the other options?

• ✗1992 is the year in which Satyajit Ray received the Bharat Ratna.
• ✗2001 is the year in which Lata Mangeshkar and Ustad Bismillah Khan received the Bharat Ratna.
• ✗2008 is the year in which Pandit Bhimsen Joshi was named for the Bharat Ratna.