GURDASPUR, a town and district of British India, in the Lahore division of the Punjab. The town had a population in 1931 of 12,094. It has a fort (now containing a Brahman monas tery) which was famous for the siege it sustained in 1712 from the Moguls.
The DISTRICT comprises an area of 1,889 sq.m. It occupies the submontane portion of the Bari Doab, or tract between the Beas and the Ravi. An intrusive spur of the British dominions runs northward into the lower Himalayan ranges, to include the moun tain sanatorium of Dalhousie, 7,687 ft. above sea-level. This station, which has a large fluctuating population during the warmer months, crowns the most westerly shoulder of a magnificent snowy range, the Dhaoladhar, between which and the plain two minor ranges intervene. The district contains several large jhils or swampy lakes, and is famous for its snipe-shooting. It is his torically important in connection with the rise of the Sikh confederacy. The whole of the Punjab was then distributed among the Sikh chiefs who triumphed over the imperial governors. In the course of a few years, however, the maharaja Ranjit Singh acquired all the territory which those chiefs had held. Pathankot and the neighbouring villages in the plain, together with the whole hill portion of the district, formed part of the area ceded by the Sikhs to the British after the first Sikh war in 1846. In 1931 the population was 970,898. A branch of the North-Western railway runs through the district. The largest town and chief commercial centre is Batala. There are important woollen mills at Dhariwal, and besides their products the district exports cotton, sugar, grain and oil-seeds.