Guru Nanak Dev Ji was married at Batala in 1487 to Mata Sulakhani Ji, daughter of Mul Chand of Pakhoke. The tradition holds that he was seated beside a mud wall on the point of collapse, that an old woman warned him, and that he replied the wall would stand as long as the world did. Gurdwara Kandh Sahib is built around a preserved section of that wall.
The town was founded in 1465 by Ram Deo, a Bhatti Rajput, under a grant from Bahlol Lodhi. It was held by the Ramgarhia misl in the eighteenth century. Jassa Singh Ramgarhia's fort and the family bunga stand there.
Shiv Kumar Batalvi took his name from the town. He was born at Bara Pind Lohtian in Sialkot district in 1936, came across in 1947, and grew up at Batala. He won the Sahitya Akademi award in 1967 for Loona, at thirty-one, and died at thirty-six.
Batala took in a large number of survivors of the killings at Bhuler in Sheikhupura district in 1947, and the memorial to that day stands here rather than at the place it happened.
The town is old, held by the Kanhaiya and then the Ramgarhia misls, and it holds the site associated with the marriage of Guru Nanak Sahib Ji.
Its foundry industry supplied agricultural machinery to the whole region and it was among the largest small engineering clusters in north India before the border cut its market.
Its Mughal and Sikh period fabric survives in fragments inside a working town. Nothing in it is marked and very few visitors to the district stop there.
Janamsakhi tradition on the marriage.
Gurdaspur district gazetteer material.