Shankar was born on 7 April 1920 in Benares (now Varanasi), then the capital of the eponymous princely state, in a Bengali family, as the youngest of seven brothers. 4.2 Other governmental and academic honours.He continued to perform until the end of his life.

From 1986 to 1992, he served as a nominated member of Rajya Sabha, the upper chamber of the Parliament of India.

Shankar engaged Western music by writing compositions for sitar and orchestra, and toured the world in the 1970s and 1980s. His influence on Harrison helped popularize the use of Indian instruments in Western pop music in the latter half of the 1960s. In 1956, Shankar began to tour Europe and the Americas playing Indian classical music and increased its popularity there in the 1960s through teaching, performance, and his association with violinist Yehudi Menuhin and Beatles guitarist George Harrison. After finishing his studies in 1944, Shankar worked as a composer, creating the music for the Apu Trilogy by Satyajit Ray, and was music director of All India Radio, New Delhi, from 1949 to 1956. He gave up dancing in 1938 to study sitar playing under court musician Allauddin Khan. Shankar was born to a Bengali Brahmin family in India, and spent his youth as a dancer touring India and Europe with the dance group of his brother Uday Shankar. Shankar was awarded India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1999. A sitar virtuoso, he became the world's best-known export of North Indian classical music in the second half of the 20th century, and influenced many musicians in India and throughout the world. Ravi Shankar KBE ( Bengali pronunciation: রবি শঙ্কর born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury, sometimes spelled as Rabindra Shankar Chowdhury 7 April 1920 – 11 December 2012) was an Indian sitarist and composer.

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