Gurdaspur lies between the Beas and the Ravi in the north of the Majha, with tehsils at Gurdaspur, Batala, Dera Baba Nanak and Dinanagar. Pathankot was separated from it in 2011.
Its 1947 award, three of four tehsils to India, gave India its land route to Kashmir and is the most disputed section of the Radcliffe line.
It holds Batala, Kalanaur where Akbar was enthroned, Gurdas Nangal where Banda Singh Bahadur Ji was besieged, Dera Baba Nanak and the Kartarpur corridor, Ghuman where Bhagat Namdev Ji lived, Qadian, and Sri Hargobindpur with Guru ki Maseet.
Its economy is sugarcane, wheat, paddy and the remains of the Batala foundry industry. It is a border district and has the investment record of one.
What is not recorded: the condition of the Ramgarhia fort at Batala, the surviving Muslim shrines of the district, and what happened in the district's villages in 1947.
The district's award in 1947 was among the most consequential decisions of the boundary commission, because the road from India into Jammu and Kashmir ran through it.
The Upper Bari Doab Canal waters most of it, so the district has more assured irrigation than almost anywhere in the Malwa. That is why its cropping still includes sugarcane where the rest of the state moved to paddy.
It is a border district on the Ravi with land beyond the fence, an old canal system, and an industrial history that mostly ended.