All the states in india have the practice of people having their caste name as their surname except in the state of Tamilnadu(about 70 million population). This was due to one atheist man's effort who opposed the caste system Periyar(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periyar_E._V._Ramasamy). He broke the ganesha statue on the day of buddha's birthday as an act of protesting the use of ganesha to instigate the religious violence for political benefits. Ganesha was created to stop people from converting to buddhism. That's why ganesha was always found under the palm tree which is buddha's place. Also ganesha statue is made gigantic and is taken in to streets and made more entertaining festival inorder to create more merriness and keep people more engaged and not to feel left out. But at the same time Ganesha statue is disolved in water after about 10 days, this is beacause the non-brahmin people who were allowed to do the priest duty for 10 days should not become a competion to the brahmin priests.