Fatikh Teshabaev

Fatikh Teshabaev combined diplomacy with the study of Indian languages and philosophy. Trained as an Indologist, he defended a dissertation on ancient Indian philosophy in Moscow. He was proficient in Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi as well as several European and Middle Eastern languages. His overseas career began in India in 1969, when he worked as an economist at the Soviet embassy; he later held consular and cultural posts there. ^{1, 2}

After work in Uzbekistan’s friendship society and presidential administration, Teshabaev became deputy foreign minister in 1991. He subsequently represented independent Uzbekistan in the United States and at the United Nations before moving to the United Kingdom in 1997. Scholarship remained part of his later career: at the Institute of Oriental Studies he joined a research project on the philosophies of Eastern peoples and wrote a book on ancient Indian philosophy. He received an Indian Jawaharlal Nehru award in 1988. ¹