I am working on building an inverted index using Python. 
I am having some doubts regarding the performance it can provide me. 
Would Python be almost equally as fast in indexing as Java or C? 
Also, I would like to know if any modules/implementations exists (and what are they, some link please?) for the same and how well do they perform compared to the something developed in Java/C?
I read about this guy who optimized his Python twice as fast as C by using it with Psyco. 
I know for a fact that this is misleading since gcc 3.x compilers are like super fast. Basically, my point is I know Python won't be faster than C. But is it somewhat comparable? 
And can someone shed some light on its performance compared with Java? I have no clue about that. (In terms of inverted index implementation, if possible because it would essentially require disk write and reads.)
I am not asking this here without googling first. I didn't get a definite answer, hence the question. 
Any help is much appreciated!
Worry about optimization after the fact. Write the code, profile it, stress test it, identify the slow parts and offset them in Cython or C or re-write the code to make it more efficient, it might be faster if you load it onto PyPy as that has a JIT Compiler, it can help with long running processes and loops.
Remember

Premature optimization, is the root of all evil. (After threads of course)
Inverted Index System using Python