Nikolai Marr’s Critique of Indo-European Philology and the Subaltern Critique of Brahman Nationalism in Colonial India

Marr’s critique of Indo-European philology is analysed in the light of contemporary postcolonial theory, showing how Marr considered “Indo-Europeanism” to be something very close to a Foucauldian discourse of power/knowledge. It is suggested that here one finds both the strengths and weakness of Marr’s ideas, which alerts us to certain problems in much postcolonial theory today. Genetic connections between Marr’s ideas and contemporary postcolonial studies are revealed. Marr’s ideas are then compared to the critique of the ideology of the Aryan supremacy developed by the Indian anti-caste intellectuals Phule and Ambedkar, in which the symbiotic relationship between imperial philology and brahman domination over the lower castes were revealed and subjected to critique. Important continuities are identified, and it is suggested that an approach to the interaction between European powers and colonial peoples’ needs to pay particular attention to the social divisions among the latter and the complex modes of dialogue that accompanied colonialism and its aftermath.