Sometimes I think it's important to be culturally sensitive with traditions like this but you are dead right .m this is inhuman. I'd be interested to hear of the reflections of an older woman looking back on her time as Kumari.
You are right, it's important to be sensitive towards various cultures but still in the past there were some very rigid traditions across the world which were not very healthy and they have been changed over the years. Like in India there were traditions of Sati, where a widow was supposed to burn herself alive after her husband's death, it was such a gross tradition and yet many people supported it in the name of religion. Thank God it was made illegal and abolished else imagine th plight of so many women in the very interior parts where people still believe in following these olden traditions and culture.