E. M. Forster`s A Passage to India (henceforth PI) and Mulk Raj Anand`s Untouchable present some significant aspects of formal disruption within the framework of realist fiction. I examine them in light of recent re-definition of modernism as critique of modernity with an emphasis on their intertextual overlap. The first subsection on PI highlights Adela`s structural relation with Fielding. I argue that a key moment of colonial epiphany takes place at the court scene, where a native fan-puller unexpectedly catches Adela`s attention. While the man`s god-like beauty induces the English woman to examine her own subjecthood, the same moment also reveals the dimension of class, a repressed but overriding factor in colonial subject-making. The scene thus includes an oblique critique on Fielding`s liberal humanism, undermining the thematic mainstay of cross-racial friendship. The same scene, however, betokens the tendency to render India as a space of spiritual essence. Untouchable, in a way, resists to the mystifying move of PI by embodying its protagonist with realistic details. As Bakha is disallowed any significant capacity of change, however, the story impinges on the principle of repetition, instead of a progressive development. This profoundly anti-realist dimension culminates in the last pages in which Anand puts Bakha into the position of a listener to a series of speeches and dialogues. This discursive turn, I suggest, self-reflectively indicates the novel`s own project of representing the subaltern. The shift further implies a move to pull the outcaste protagonist into the emerging post-Independence nation. In this regard, I examine a moment of colonial epiphany that forms an intriguing parallel with the aforementioned court scene of PI, along with the later discourses on the future of India.