Gurdaspur is a city in the state of Punjab, situated in the northwest part of the Republic of India. It is located in the center of and is the administrative head of Gurdaspur District. It was the location of a fort (later turned into a Brahmin monastery) which was famous for the siege it sustained in 1712 from the Mughals.
It is historically important in connection with the rise of the Sikh Confederacy. In the latter part of the 18th Century, the whole of the Punjab was distributed among the Sikh chiefs who triumphed over the Imperial Mughal governors. In the course of a few years, however, Maharaja Ranjit Singh acquired all the territory which those chiefs had held. Pathankot and the neighboring villages in the plain, together with the whole of the hill portion of the district, formed part of the area ceded by the Sikhs to the British after the First Anglo-Sikh War in 1845. In 1862, after receiving one or two additions, the district was brought into its present shape. In 1901 the population was 940,334, showing a slight decrease, compared with an increase of 15% in the previous decade.
Gurdaspur was founded by Sahib Deep Chand and was named after his grandfather Guriya in the beginning of 17th century. In his honour, this city was named Gurdaspur. He bought land for Gurdaspur from the Jats of the Sangi Gotra. Guriya, a Sanwal Brahmin of the Kaushal Gotra came from Paniar, a village situated 5 miles north of Gurdaspur. The ancestors of Guriya had come from Ayodhya and settled in Paniar. Guriya Ji had two sons Nawal Rai and Pala. The descendants of Nawal Rai settled in Gurdaspur and Nawal Rai’s son Baba Deep Chand was a contemporary of Guru Gobind Singh. It is believed that Guru Gobind Singh gave the title of Ganj Bakhsh (Owner Of Treasure) to Baba Deep Chand. The descendants of Baba Deep Chand are called Mahants
Gurdaspur was the last bastion of Banda Bahadur. Banda Bahadur's legend lives on in the poem "Bandabir", by the Indian Nobel prize winner Rabindranath Tagore. The poem, written in the Bengali language, has been translated into English, since.
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