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The world’s greatest sitar player Ravi Shankar has died in a hospital in the USA, aged 92. The maestro was hospitalized last week to have an operation, but never recovered. His wife Sukanya and daughter Anoushka, also an sitarist, were by his side when he passed . They issued a statement to say: “Unfortunately, the best efforts of the surgeons and doctors care of him, his body was not able to withstand the of the surgery." They added: “Although it is a time for and sadness, it is also a time for all of us to give thanks and to be that we were able to have him as a part of our lives. He will live forever in our hearts and in his music.”

Ravi Shankar was born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury on 7 April 1920 in Varanasi on the of the River Ganges. He started learning the sitar when he was 26. Sixteen years later he was Europe and the USA helping to increase the of Indian classical music. His break came when he taught George Harrison of The Beatles to play the sitar. He went on to have a influence on Western popular music and became an international superstar. He said in an in 2011: “Everywhere I went, I was . I didn't like that at all.” Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh him as a "national and global ambassador of India's cultural ".