Which Indian musician and sitar player is the founder of the National Orchestra of India ?

Correct — D. Ravi Shankar was music director at All India Radio from February 1949 to January 1956, and it was there that he founded AIR's Indian National Orchestra and composed for it, combining Western and classical Indian instrumentation.

He answers both halves of the stem. He was a sitar player, trained under Allauddin Khan at Maihar, who later carried Hindustani music to concert audiences abroad — and option (d) is the name attached to that AIR post.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Ayyagari Syamasundaram — No All India Radio orchestra is credited to this name. The stem sets two filters — a sitar player, and the founding of the national orchestra — and it is the second that settles the item.
• (b)
  Kishan Maharaj — Kishan Maharaj was a tabla maestro of the Banaras gharana. He fails the stem's instrument filter before the orchestra question is even reached.
• (c)
  Shahid Parvez Khan — Shahid Parvez Khan is a sitar player of the Etawah gharana, so he clears the instrument test — but the national orchestra credit belongs to Ravi Shankar's AIR years.

All India Radio was the main institutional patron of classical music in the first decades after independence, and its music directorship was a post of real weight.

AIR's Indian National Orchestra was an attempt at composed ensemble music rather than the soloist-and-accompanist format of a classical concert, and Ravi Shankar wrote for it by combining Western and classical Indian instrumentation.

SSC asks founder-of-an-institution items because they pin one name to one body, which is easy to test and easy to confuse.

Key facts

• Ravi Shankar (1920-2012) was a sitar player and worked as music director at All India Radio from February 1949 to January 1956.
• He founded the Indian National Orchestra at All India Radio and composed for it, combining Western and classical Indian instrumentation.
• Ravi Shankar received the Bharat Ratna in 1999.

Common traps

• Reading only the word musician and picking any famous name, when the stem also says sitar player.
• Confusing All India Radio's national orchestra with a film or state orchestra.

No directly related past PYQ was found.