In which year was the shehnai maestro Ustad Bismillah Khan awarded the Bharat Ratna?

Explanation

Ustad Bismillah Khan (1916-2006), the greatest shehnai player of India, was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour, in 2001. In the same year, the playback singer Lata Mangeshkar also received the Bharat Ratna.

Bismillah Khan was born on 21 March 1916 in Dumraon, in present-day Bihar, into a family of shehnai players who served at the courts of the region. He moved to Varanasi as a child and learnt the shehnai from his uncle, Ali Bux Vilayatu, who played the shehnai at the Kashi Vishwanath temple. He lived in Varanasi for the rest of his life and was deeply attached to the city and the river Ganga. He was a devout Muslim who also played at Hindu temples, and he became a symbol of India's composite culture. He played the shehnai at the Red Fort in Delhi on the eve of India's independence, on 15 August 1947, and again on the first Republic Day, 26 January 1950. He received the Padma Shri (1961), the Padma Bhushan (1968), the Padma Vibhushan (1980) and finally the Bharat Ratna (2001). He was only the third classical musician to receive the Bharat Ratna, after M.S. Subbulakshmi and Ravi Shankar. He died in Varanasi on 21 August 2006, and he was buried with a shehnai. The Sangeet Natak Akademi named its award for young artists, the Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar (instituted in 2006), after him.

Why not the other options?

1998 is the year in which M.S. Subbulakshmi received the Bharat Ratna, the first musician to do so.

1999 is the year in which Pandit Ravi Shankar received the Bharat Ratna.

2008 is the year in which Pandit Bhimsen Joshi was named for the Bharat Ratna.