On Thursday 20 Sep 2007 2:23 pm, shiv sastry wrote: > As far as I know - this refers to the very loud and PUBLIC celebration in > every street corner, as opposed to the private, in house worship that has > gone on for much longer
Corroboration of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bal_Gangadhar_Tilak In 1893, Lokmanya Tilak reshaped the annual Ganesh festival from private family celebrations into a grand public event. [3] He did so "to bridge the gap between the Brahmins and the non-Brahmins and find an appropiate context in which to build a new grassroots unity between them" in his nationalistic strivings against the British in Maharashtra.[4][5] Thus, Tilak chose Ganesha as a rallying point for Indian protest against British rule because of his wide appeal as "the god for Everyman".[6] [7] Tilak was the first to install large public images of Ganesha in pavillions, and he established the practice of submerging all the public images on the tenth day. shiv
