The question asks which of the given statements cannot be inferred. Let us check each one by one.

Option 1 states British colonialism was at least partly an outcome of Enlightenment rationalism. The fact that the colonial state emerged at least partly as a result of Enlightenment rationalism can be inferred from paragraph 1: ‘the British colonial state represented the great conquering discourse of Enlightenment rationalism... As inheritors and representatives of this discourse, which carried everything before it, this colonial state could hardly adopt for long such a self-denying attitude...’

Option 2 states British colonialism faced resistance from existing structural forms of Indian modernity. This does not sound correct, as the passage only talks about European modernity, not Indian modernity. Paragraph 1 does mention that initiatives to introduce its logic of modernity on the Indian society by the British ‘were resisted by pre-existing structural forms’. Were these structural forms of Indian modernity? This is not mentioned in the passage.

Consider option 3. British colonialism was at least partly shaped by the project of European modernity. This is clearly true. See paragraph 1 : ‘the British colonial state represented the great conquering discourse of Enlightenment rationalism.... As inheritors and representatives of this discourse.... this colonial state could hardly adopt for long such a self-denying attitude. It had restructured everything in Europe...and would do the same in India’. The British colonial state inherited the discourse of Enlightenment rationalism which had restructured everything in Europe.

Option 4 states that British colonialism allowed the treatment of colonies as experimental sites. This can also be easily inferred from paragraph 1: ‘....some empirically inclined theorists of that generation considered the colonies a massive laboratory of utilitarian or other theoretical experiments’.