Majha means the middle. It is the country of the Bari Doab, between the Beas and the Ravi, and in Indian Punjab it now means Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Gurdaspur and Pathankot districts, with Lahore and Sheikhupura on the other side of the line.
It is the oldest settled and most historically dense part of Punjab. Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Goindwal, Khadur, Dera Baba Nanak and Kartarpur are all in it.
The Majhail dialect is the standard on which written Punjabi is based. What is taught as Punjabi is Majhi.
The Majha supplied most of the misl leadership, most of the Ghadar recruitment from the Amritsar side, and a very large share of army recruitment.
The 1947 line took half of it. What is left is a border region, with the fence, the crossings at Attari and Dera Baba Nanak, and an economy shaped by having no hinterland to the west.
The Upper Bari Doab canal, opened in 1859, is the Majha's water, and its headworks at Madhopur on the Ravi stayed on the Indian side in 1947 while a large part of its command went to Pakistan. That is one of the two cases that made the water question urgent within months of the line being drawn.
It is also a claim about temperament and Punjabis use it that way. The Majhail is supposed to be blunt and quick to fight and the Malwai canny and slow, and every Punjabi will tell you this, and every Punjabi knows it is a stereotype, and says it anyway.
The fence runs through it. Villages hold land on the far side of the wire, cultivated on a pass, with gates opened at fixed hours and a strip along it that cannot be sown at all. That is an ordinary condition of life in Tarn Taran and Amritsar and it is invisible from anywhere else in the country.
Punjab district gazetteers.