Gurdaspur District was a district in the Lahore Division of the Punjab Province of British India with its headquarters at Gurdaspur. It lay between 31°35' and 32°30′ N. and 74° 52′ and 75° 56′ E., with an area of 1,889 square miles(4892 sq. km). It was bounded north by the Jammu province of Kashmir; on the west by Sialkot District; on the south-west by Amritsar District; on the south-east and east by the Beas River, which separated it from the Kapurthala State and Hoshiarpur District, and also by Kangra District; and on the north-east by the Chamba State.Gurdaspur Distract - Imperial Gazetteer of India, volume 12: p. 390
Geography The District occupied the flat-land area of the Bari Doab, together with a triangular wedge of territory west of the Ravi River. It included the hill stations of Dalhousie and Bakloh, two isolated pieces of hill territory acquired from the Chamba State, together with a strip of territory on which the cart road ran connecting these outlying stations with the main body of the district. The Pathankot Tehsil (tehsil means subdistrict) comprised 130 miles of hilly country between the Ravi and the Chakki torrent, which divided it from Kangra District.Gurdaspur District
West of the Ravi is a small tract between that river and the Jammu hills, watered by numerous flowing streams and of great fertility; but the rest of the District west of the Ravi was, with the exception of the riverain strips, an arid expanse of rolling downs intersected by sandy torrent beds. The Chakki River (a tributary of river Beas River), formed the eastern border of the Pathankot Tehsil, - the Beas river then formed the boundary separating Gurdaspur from Hoshiarpur District on the east. On the west, the Ravi River formed the border between Gurdaspur and the Jammu State for about 25 miles and then further south formed the boundary between Sialkot and Amritsar Districts.
History The chief historical importance of the district lay in its connexion with the rise of the Sikhs. Dera Baba Nanak on the Ravi was named after the founder of Sikhism, who died in 1538 on the opposite bank. Both Guru Amar Das and Guru Har Rai were also connected with the district. In 1710 the Sikh leader Banda captured Batala and Kalanaur, and made the district the headquarters of his raids on the neighbourhood. Driven into the hills by Bahadur Shah in 1711, he returned and built a fort at Lohgarh, identified with the modern Gurdaspur, and defeated Islam Jang, viceroy of Lahore. In 1713 Abdus Samad Khan drove him back to the hills, and, though he again returned and recaptured Kalanaur, finally took him prisoner at Lohgarh in 1716. Imperial Gazetteer of India, volume 12: p. 393
The next period in the history of the District is closely connected with Adina Beg Khan. At first governor of Bahrampur and subsequently of the Jalandhar Doab, he founded Dinanagar in 1730, which he seems generally to have made his headquarters. This ruler is chiefly remarkable for the astuteness with which he played off Ahmad Shah, the Mughal emperors, and the Marathas, one against the other, until he was installed by the last-named power as governor of Lahore with head-quarters at Batala. His death in 1758 removed the main obstacle to the spread of the Sikh power, which was only temporarily checked by their defeat at Barnala in 1762.
The Sikh Ramgarhia confederacy, under the famous Jassa Singh, then occupied Batala, Dinanagar, Kalanaur, Sri Hargobindpur, and other places, the rest of the Bari Doab south of Dinanagar falling into the hands of the Kanhaiyas, while west of the Ravi River the Bhangi confederacy rose to power. The rival confederacies soon fell out, and a struggle for supremacy ensued between the Ramgarhias and Kanhaiyas; the Bhangis, who supported the former, lost their power in these parts in 1774, and Jassa Singh himself was expelled by the Kanhaiyas. He returned in 1783, but again lost Batala to the Kanhaiyas in 1786; and two years after his death, in 1806, all the remaining possessions of the Ramgarhia confederacy were annexed by Ranjit Singh. The Kanhaiya estates were confiscated in 1811, and later on Batala and its dependencies were assigned to Sher Singh, a putative son of Ranjit Singh by his Kanhaiya wife, Mehtab Kaur. Dinanagar was a favourite resort of Ranjit Singh, and it was there that in 1838 he received the Macnaghten mission which negotiated the proposed alliance for placing Shah Shuja on the throne of Kabul.
Pathankot and a few neighbouring villages in the plains, together with all the hilly portion of the district, formed part of the country ceded by the Sikhs to the British after the First Anglo-Sikh War in 1846. Under the original distribution of the new territory they were attached to Kangra; but after the final annexation in 1849, the upper portion of the Bari Doab became a separate district, with its head-quarters at Batala. In 1852 the headquarters were moved to Gurdaspur, and in 1853 the district received was expanded gaining the Shakargarh tahsil from Sialkot District. After the 1947 Partition of India, Gurdaspur would lose this Shakargarh subdivision as the district was split between India and Pakistan.
During the Indian Rebellion of 1857 no outbreak took place in the district, in spite of the large number of Indians then employed on canal works. In 1853 the site for the new sanitarium of Dalhousie, together with the strip of hill road connecting it with the plains, was purchased by the British government from Chamba State and in 1862 the further transfer of hill country between the Ravi and the Chakki rivers brought the district into its final shape before partition. Imperial Gazetteer of India, volume 12: p. 394
Demography Gurdaspur contained 11 towns and 2,244 villages in 1901, its population at the last three enumerations were: (1881) 823,695 (1891) 943,922 (1901) 940,334.
The fall in the decade to 1901 was largely due to emigration, some 44,000 settlers leaving the district for the Chenab Colony, that year the population was distributed between the tehsils (subdistricts) as follows:
Tahsil Area (Sq mi) Towns Villages Population Population per sq mi % Change since 1891 People who were literate Gurdaspur 496 3 668 238,379 520.9 + 2.5 7,478 Shakargarh 485 .. 703 234,465 483.4 -6.3 4,789 Pathankot 367 5 395 141,623 385.9 +0.5 5,250 Batala 476 3 478 305,867 642.6 +1.7 9,262 District total 1,889 11 2,244 940,334 497.8 +0.4 26,779
Muslims numbered 463,371, or over 49 per cent of the total population; Hindus, 380,636, or over 40 per cent.; and Sikhs, 91,756, or 10 per cent. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, who claimed to be the Mahdi and the Messiah, founded a sect known as the Ahmadiyyas. The district contained several important Sikh shrines, especially at Dera Baba Nanak, and a large number of Hindu and Sikh religious houses. The density of the population was high. The language of the District was chiefly Punjabi, but a good deal of Dogri was spoken on the Jammu border. Imperial Gazetteer of India, volume 12: p. 395
+ Religious groups in Gurdaspur District (British Punjab province era)Religiousgroup1881189119011911192119311941 Islam 391,400 459,039 463,371 408,216 422,877 493,216 589,923 Hinduism 359,329 396,582 380,636 284,017 258,823 255,949 290,774 Sikhism 72,395 85,837 91,756 121,078 137,625 178,471 221,261 Christianity 463 2,400 4,471 23,365 32,832 43,243 51,522 Jainism 108 64 72 73 20 15 25 Zoroastrianism 0 0 28 22 12 2 6 Buddhism 0 0 0 0 3 2 0 Judaism 0 0 0 0 0 0 Others 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Total population 823,695 943,922 940,334 836,771 852,192 970,898 1,153,511 +Religion in the Tehsils of Gurdaspur District (1941)TehsilHinduism Islam Sikhism Christianity Jainism OthersTotalGurdaspur Tehsil57,281171,49876,69522,50622817328,819Batala Tehsil33,610209,277116,41320,670083380,053Pathankot Tehsil83,33059,5487,5802,3073366153,134Shakargargh Tehsil116,553149,60020,5734,77900291,505 +Religion in the Tehsils of Gurdaspur District (1921)TehsilHinduism Islam Sikhism Christianity Jainism OthersTotalGurdaspur Tehsil46,297122,60648,81716,406200234,146Batala Tehsil45,129145,67273,21211,68200275,695Pathankot Tehsil76,75248,4313,2931,011015129,502Shakargargh Tehsil90,645106,16812,3033,73300212,849
+Mother Tongue (MT) statistics from 1931 Census, Gurdaspur DistrictSource: Page 284, Census of India 1931, Volume XVII: Punjab, Part I & II - Report and Statistical Tables, Published by the Government of India, Census Commissioner's Office; Census of India 1931: Punjab - Mother Tongue Statistics, Available at JSTORDistrictPunjabiHindustaniWestern PahadiOthersTotalMT onlyTotalMT onlyTotalMT onlyTotalMT onlyGurdaspur98.94%98.91%0.34%0.20%0.27%0.11%0.45%0.78%
Administration The district was divided into the four tehsils these were: Gurdaspur Batala Shakargarh Pathankot
These were the municipalities of the District (besides the administrative headquarters of the District at Gurdaspur): Dalhousie Batala Dinanagar Kalanaur Pathankot Sujanpur Dera Nanak Sri Hargobindpur The district also contained two notified areas:
Fatehgarh Bahrampur
Missionaries The American United Presbyterian Mission was established in Gurdaspur in 1872,Guide to the India-Pakistan Mission Records, Presbyterian Church USA and occupied the Pathankot and Shakargarh tahsils. The Church Missionary Society had an important station at Batala, established in 1878, where it maintained the Baring High School. In 1901, the District contained 4,198 native Christians.
Transport Opened in 1894, a branch of the North-Western Railway from Amritsar passed through the district, with its terminus at Pathankot, from which a metalled cart-road ran to Dalhousie and another to Palampur in Kangra District, with a branch to Dharamsala. The most important unmetalled roads were the Hoshiarpur-Sialkot road, which passed through Gurdaspur and Sialkot, and the road from Pathankot passing through Gurdaspur to Amritsar. The Hoshiarpur-Sialkot road was split by an international border once India and Pakistan became separate independent states, the total length of metalled roads was 59 miles and of un-metalled roads 608 miles.
District officials A Deputy-Commissioner ran the district - aided by six Assistant or Extra-Assistant Commissioners, of whom one was a sub-divisional officer in charge of Dalhousie during the summer months, and another in charge of the administration. Each tehsil of the district was under a tehsildar assisted by a naib-tehsildar (deputy tehsildar).
Law The Deputy-Commissioner as District Magistrate was responsible for criminal justice. The civil judicial work was under a District Judge, both supervised by the Divisional Judge of the Amritsar Civil Division (also the Sessions Judge). There were five munsifs, one at mead-quarters, two at Batala, and one at each of the other tehsils. There were also Cantonment Magistrates at Dalhousie and Bakloh, and two honorary magistrates. The predominant form of crime was burglary.
Police The regular police force consisted of 566 of all ranks, including 5 cantonment and 147 municipal police, in charge of a Superintendent, who usually had 4 inspectors under him. The village watchmen numbered 1,957. There were 18 police stations and 12 outposts. The District Jail at Gurdaspur could accommodate 287 prisoners.
Education